Another year, another massive strike at Disney.
When we think about some of our favorite Disney actors, we might think of people like Mary Poppins (1964) star Dick Van Dyke, Marvel star Chris Evans, Miley Cyrus, Hilary Duff, Selena Gomez, Johnny Depp, or Dwayne Johnson. But there are thousands more that you don’t see. They bring Disney characters to life in an entirely different way — through Disney’s video games. They might not get the praise those in front of the camera do, but they are just as important.
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And now, they are on strike.
On July 25, nearly 35,000 members of SAG-AFTRA — the biggest acting union in the world — voted to go on strike. The video game actors had been working without a contract since November 2022, as their union attempted to negotiate with the major video game studios, including Disney Character Voices.
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After nearly two years without a contract, the actors had enough and voted to stop working.
According to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter:
The union has said that pay has not kept pace with inflation and it has unaddressed concerns about gaming companies’ use of artificial intelligence in the contracts of performers who make money using their voices and/or likenesses. On July 20, SAG-AFTRA’s national board voted to give authority to Crabtree-Ireland to call a strike. As of Saturday, the union said it was “far apart on resolution of necessary terms covering critical A.I. protections for video game performers.”
The Nanny star Fran Drescher is the president of SAG-AFTRA and released a statement shortly after the Video Game Voice Actors’ Strike was announced.
“We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse A.I. to the detriment of our members. Enough is enough. When these companies get serious about offering an agreement our members can live — and work — with, we will be here, ready to negotiate.”
Artificial Intelligence Leads to Another Strike
This is not the first major strike that Disney and other studios have had to deal with recently. In fact, they are still recovering from the last major strike, which just happened last year.
In May 2023, the Writers Guild of America announced that they were going on strike. While the strike did not shut Hollywood down, it threw up a huge roadblock. Studios could continue to edit the projects they already had, but a lot of projects had to be put on pause. There was a ton of backlash when those same studios, including Disney, hired non-union writers (known as scabs) to continue to write for them.
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Just two months later, the entertainment industry came to a screeching halt when the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) voted to go on strike. No new projects could be made, reshoots could not be done, and voice-overs were an absolute no-go. Disney lost millions, and their entire film slate was thrown into chaos for months.
The Writers’ Strike ended in September and the Actors’ Strike ended two months later, in November 2023. However, the studios are still trying to catch up and bring their slates as close to on-schedule as they can.
Like the Voice Actors’ Strike, the Writers’ Strike and the Actors’ Strike dealt with the controversial topic of artificial intelligence. Both groups wanted more protection and wanted to ensure that robots would not take over their jobs.
Chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland called for the Voice Actors’ Strike. He was shocked that the studios didn’t seem to learn anything from last year. He said that the studios did not want to negotiate in good faith and were instead more interested in “flagrant exploitation.”
Over the years, Disney has earned more than $1 billion in video game sales.
Do you think Disney was crazy to allow another strike to happen? Should they have worked harder to negotiate? Let us know in the comments!
