Lights, camera, cut! SAG, WGA strike halts TV, movies being made in Colorado

As Hollywood-based writers and actors continue to picket studios, related TV and film production in Colorado has ground to a standstill. And unless you’re a movie star living in Aspen, you likely have zero leverage to change it, according to Colorado’s top film leader.

But it’s not all bad news. The strike could lead to an uptick in the state’s already robust reality-TV scene, which includes fixer-upper shows such as HGTV’s “Rock the Block” and “Rico the Rescue,” and the Netflix dating series “Love is Blind.” Those are supported by Colorado’s production rebates, and without actors (represented by the SAG-AFTRA union) or writers (repped by the WGA), there are no picket lines to cross, said Donald Zuckerman, Colorado film commissioner.

“We’ve been telling anybody who wants to make something here that has actors to wait and see what happens,” said Zuckerman, also a veteran film producer. “We think the independents are going to be entitled to waivers. … Those producers have no say in the final outcome of this fight so why not get as many people working as possible? Then at least you have some income.”

SAG on Tuesday issued a list of 39 productions that were approved to continue filming during the strike, Rolling Stone reported, amid 150 applications for the waivers. The shows can go on as long as they’re not affiliated with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), or Hollywood studios. Zuckerman is hoping this will be the case in Colorado.

But with so much uncertainty — including whether SAG and WGA can negotiate favorable streaming revenues and limit the use of AI — there’s no timeline for a return, even as new Colorado productions languish amid stalled release, promotion and distribution schedules.

“A lot depends on how much money we have,” said Zuckerman, whose office’s operating budget last year came in  $500,000, along with $750,000 in incentive funding. “What we strive to do is first take care of the filmmakers and (actors) who live here.”

Colorado attracts fewer big-budget productions than states such as New Mexico and Utah due to the relatively small size of its incentives offered by Zuckerman’s Office of Film, Television and Media — itself part of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

Its budget, which is debated and approved by state legislators, goes as much toward union-skirting reality TV shows and out-of-state movies as it does car commercials and video game companies. However, Colorado’s film industry could surpass $1 billion in annual sales and grow into a nationally attractive scene if legislators can commit to offering more economic incentives, according to a study released by the state in January. That gives statewide boosters a reason to champion a swift agreement.

As of October 2022, roughly $30 million in incentives had been paid or conditionally approved for productions. Zuckerman’s office reported $182.8 million in actual and predicted production spend and 6,023 cast and crew hires from the start of the program in 2013 through calendar year 2022.

Notable Colorado productions have included the Netflix original “Our Souls at Night” (Robert Redford, Jane Fonda), “The Hateful Eight” (Quentin Tarantino), “Furious 7” (Vin Diesel), Cop Car (Kevin Bacon, Cameron Manheim); and “Dear Eleanor” (Jessica Alba, Luke Wilson). Colorado also enjoyed screen time in the Bravo TV series, “Top Chef,” and since 2018 has granted rebates to 16 projects produced locally to air on Food Network, PBS, Facebook Live, HGTV and Velocity Channel, according to a December report.

The diverse nature of productions would seem to give Colorado some wiggle room during the strike. But Colorado actors, writers and filmmakers are already suffering from strike disruptions, as well as recent moves by streaming services such as Max and Disney+ to unilaterally yank hundreds of hours of content from the platforms as a tax write-off.

“The strike is a pain, but it’s necessary because I don’t feel like we’re getting what we should on streaming,” said Ben Roy, a comic, musician and co-creator of the Denver-set sitcom “Those Who Can’t.” “It’s like COVID again: no one’s buying anything, no one’s talking about anything. Writing is often a nightmare anyway, and this isn’t helping.”

Roy watched as Max (formerly HBO Max) pulled all three seasons of “Those Who Can’t” from its platform. Not only is the show unavailable to stream anywhere, it’s not even available for purchase. Roy and fellow Grawlix comedy-trio members Adam Cayton-Holland and Andrew Orvedahl — who, like Roy, starred in and wrote for “Those Who Can’t” — can’t get a clear answer from their former network partners.

“The word we’re getting is that it’s because they switched to this new Max platform from HBO Max,” he said this week. “So we’re hoping the show comes back at some point. But (the studio) can still do foreign deals, which we’re not getting (details) on. And that’s part of what the unions are arguing for right now — more transparency.”

“I think that the whole world is looking at us right now, because human beings in all different walks of life are being replaced by robots,” said Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, in a Variety interview this week.

It can’t go on forever, Zuckerman said, particularly as industry machinery such as publicity and promotion begins to falter with layoffs. Low-paid background actors, who make up about 60% of SAG, are losing their livelihoods, and the well-heeled studios are digging in for a long, expensive fight. About 78% of top companies have already rated AI and machine learning as critical revenue drivers, according to software company SambaNova Systems.

One solution is having the highest-paid Hollywood executives and actors take a 25% pay cut and “try to narrow the difference” between the highest and lowest earners, according to a CBS News interview with mogul Barry Diller. Another is agreeing to some amount of AI in productions, given the expense of hiring, feeding and putting up background actors.

That would certainly benefit Colorado creatives, given their generally modest profile. But in an industry driven by multimillion-dollar profits and losses, that seems unlikely, experts say.

“None of these people have any money and they all have another job, and so what do they do?” Zuckerman said. “These are people who needed to get paid yesterday.”

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