01/21/2025
So … the 20’s so far …
I’ll preface this by saying, if you, as an actor, have had some gigs over the past five or so years, whether you agree with me right now or not, you are doing better than most. Let me explain.
Recently I exchanged some emails with an industry partner of mine. I laid out all of the setbacks our industry has faced recently. They turned around and shot back a timeline of the list. Here’s the list:
- Pandemic 2020 – 2022
- Writers’ strike 2022 – 2023
- Actors’ strike 2023 – 2024
- IATSE/Teamsters almost strikes 2024
- Streaming isn’t profitable WHOLE DECADE [so far]
- England tax breaks 2023
- Apocalyptic firestorm 2025
I sent the list, they added the dates.
How’d we get here?
On February 1st, 2013, Netflix released House of Cards and set the precedent of what the future of streaming was going to look like. Binging had begun. From then till the pandemic began, there was an unprecedented amount of work available not only to A-Listers but the rest of the journeymen actors as well. It was a great time to be a good actor. Especially here in the Georgia market. The 2008 tax incentive system was attracting more and more work from this glut of production. Four, five, six auditions per week had become a bit normal. The pandemic stopped everything … EVERYTHING for about six months until we all figured out how we could turn the machine back on … safely. Were mistakes made? In hindsight, hell yes but, at the time we were searching around in the dark.
There was a flurry of work beginning around Fall of 2020 up until the Spring/Summer of the writers’ strike 2022. This was mostly the pent-up work that was on hiatus during the first year of the pandemic. The streamers continued throwing money at new projects in an effort to gain market-share (eyeballs). Netflix and Hulu were (and still are) at the top of the heap and the only players actually making a profit. Prime is in third and still not turning a profit. Prime’s entertainment division is such a small part of the vast Amazon monopoly (a whole other discussion), they don’t really mind I guess.
The writers and actors continued to bow to the wishes of these new forces in the industry. “Just let us get this thing up and running and then we’ll let you make more money.” was their basic tenet during that time. And we actors and the writers stuck with them but, by late 2022 time was up and first the writers and then the actors finally said, “enough is enough” followed by overlapping strikes that pretty much wiped out 2023. Not long after, the threat of the same thing happening with IATSE and the Teamsters continued to hamper production.
Once the dust of the strikes and potential strikes had settled, it appears the streamers were very cognizant that their utopian future of “pay for what you want without commercials” wasn’t the panacea they had envisioned. Just as the artists were rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the flood of new work in 2024, the work didn’t materialize. Producers, realizing their miscalculation, slashed production about 40% across the board. Major studios even left the country for better tax breaks overseas.
And now, mother nature steps in and drops the hammer physically on the heart of the entertainment world with the apocalyptic fires that have swept Los Angeles. What’s next? Locusts? Skynet?
So, as I prefaced all of this, if you’ve had some gigs over the past five years or so, you have done well. Better than most. Be grateful.
Here we are, one day after a new administration takes the reins of the American experiment. I hope they know what they’re doing. I wasted four years whining about it last time. Not this time. Will I be voting in 2026? You’re damn right I will be. What will 2025 and beyond look like for the artists in our industry? Who the fuck knows?
My best advice, if you are even looking for any, is to stay focused on the process and forget about the product. If you are a performing artist, you are better served by loving the process and being pleasantly surprised by any product that may come your way. Theatre, acting training, writing, 48-hour films, Art-school films, improv, sketch, etc. etc. Don’t quit. Keep doing what you love no matter what. However, if you don’t love the process, as described above, maybe you should have a long talk with yourself about what it is you really do love, that isn’t product, and do that instead. If you don’t really quite understand the difference between product and process, I’d be more than happy to talk about it with you. Or, ask your other artist friends.
To learn a little more about the advent and current state of the streamers, I found this piece educational: https://youtu.be/FNBZY4v-B-E?si=ho-SO0wFn2o5CsYw
Thank you for reading,
Jayson