“The company now expects to exceed $1.7 billion in free cash flow for the third quarter of 2023, in part due to the strong performance of ‘Barbie’ as well as incremental impact from strike-related factors,” the entertainment giant says in a regulatory filing.
What these articles never talk about is the demands that actors and writers are making, and how paltry that pay raise would be in comparison to these losses.
The studios are being pennywise and pound-foolish, and pissing off the most valuable part of their industry, the talent.
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I just hope AI plateaus before any of that cyberpunk shit happens.
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I still think people are vastly over-estimating how close we are to that kind of AI.
Reminds me of all the people who thought we were close to Ready Player One style VR back when VR was taking off a few years ago. And now VR stuff is clearly dying, the fad petering out with the technology only making relatively minor improvements from where it started (at least compared to what fiction portrays).
Yes, exactly this. The LLMs have done an amazing job of faking AI and it’s tricked a ton of people into believing that we’re nearly there, but we’re still a long way off from AI. Back in the 70s everyone thought AI was just around the corner as well, and while we’re much closer today, we’re still not close enough everyone should be worried about it. What everyone should be worried about though is the stupid executives buying all the snake oil and firing everyone before they realize they’ve been conned.
This isn’t a battle against AI, it’s a battle against dumb executives once again trying to figure out how to fuck their employees to make even more money for themselves.
VR stuff is not dying. You’re just in the Trough of Disillusionment of the Gartner hype cycle. Look at Steam Sales or Oculus Sales for their VR games. Look at the new headsets that continue to arrive to the market. The VR market might still be relatively small, but it’s always improving and growing.
Edit lol no counter argument, just downvotes from kids who refuse to believe they might be wrong.
VR headsets are still improving and still being sold, no disagreement there. But when I search for great VR games to play those lists look almost the same as when I got into VR several years ago. They’re still recommending only games that came out years ago and that I’ve already played. At most they might recommend a new mod to turn a regular game into VR. Where is the content? I thought I’d one day upgrade from my HTC Vive, but I don’t see the point if all I’m going to play are the games I’ve already played.
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I think we’re ‘20 years away’ from it in the same way we were ‘20 years away’ from practical fusion power in the 50’s. It feels close, but we don’t even know what we’re actually trying to achieve. People don’t even agree or understand what human intelligence is, what creativity is. You can’t progress down this path like we do with newer, faster processors. It’ll take a new epiphany, a whole new approach to get to the kind of AI people have been dreaming of and writing stories about. You could give the machine a thousand times the processing power and all the training data possible, but it will never really progress past a the current shallow mimicking of intelligence. There’s no mechanism for it to grow or be corrected on the facts. That will take something new.
But doesn’t still work on the current level. We can but only speculate of what will happen. This is what people in 2000s must have felt about the internet.
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Being in my 60’s I’d have to agree with you. The range and capabilities of cell phone technology now vs 2003 is a blow-out.
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We’re gonna need more than hope to cease further AI progress.
I don’t want it ceased, just controlled.
That’s completely fair. AI control is a very difficult task, but one that is worth working on.
Less than a decade, I think. We won’t live to see the first completely generated movie star. We’ll live to see them become the default. We’ll live to see a time when live human acting is, in and of itself, a noteworthy occurrence.
AI isn’t even driving this forward. Square has been ringing this bell for more than a decade with its movies. AI is just making it cheap. And that fact alone is why it will continue, unabated and unhindered, come what may.
What the studios aren’t realizing is that it’s not just the end for human actors, it’s their end as well. If you can generate feature length films with effects and acting and sound, who the hell needs a major studio?
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“All past performances are not eligible to be part of training data. Talent will have the option to allow their performance/work to be added to a training data set no less than N years after the first public release”
And how can that ever be truly ensured/compliance confirmed?
Studios can pinky swear then somehow, oops, some third party that they totally didn’t know about their practices uses the off limits material to generate AI results which are then sold to the studio.
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It’s unfortunate that these are the sticking points for the union, because they seem like really bad hills to die on long term.
Residuals are antiquated in the streaming world, gettingpaid up front is a far better deal. If you want recurring income, negotiate a stock grant. Residuals are chasing a shrinking pile of money competing with 40 years of content. Prestige TV makes headlines, but a big reason streamers aren’t releasing numbers is because those shows are crap for engagement. Shows like Friends are still likely dominating the streaming count.
AI is coming whether you like it or not, they would be far better off negotiating a way to include AI as it advances rather than seek to ban it. The fair use argument is really strong for model builders. Actors and writers are better off working with current producers to create a path forward for AI, because a complete ban is likely to result in an outside company coming in and disrupting the market. Yes the stance producers started with is extreme on this subject matter, but the actors and writers are similarly extreme.
I bet doubling the pay for everyone striking would cost a lot less than 300-500M a year.
It would. But that would set the precedent that unions have any power and studios didn’t have all of the power. Studios aren’t willing to cave because they’re afraid they can’t completely control their workers and siphon as many profits as possible.
So the owners would rather take a 500m loss than settle. Fuck them.
Daddy does not negotiate with slaves!
I think part of the problem here is the news media and how the stories are framed.
The headline should be that obstinate companies refuse to share the profits and meet reasonable union demands, which will cost them millions.
Shows you whose side most of these news outlets are on. Once you see it, you can’t unsee the rampant, egregious anti labor bias in the news, or actually anywhere. Many people in the US have been effectively trained to hate unions and those striking. It’s just mind blowing to see how many people’s knee jerk reaction is siding against strikers.
These companies own the news media outlets.
Can’t rely on fake news on provide quality information. They are just daddy’s lap dogs shilling to us.
Workers must get educated, learn to read between the lines and act tin their own self interest and the working class… Anything less than that, slaves aint even trying to play the game.
Capital owners only speak language of profit so that’s how worker must speak to these lEAdErS.
Good. That’s the point, ya greedy shitheads.
Seriously, all the actors, writers, fx guys, directors, and so on should just form an employee owned studio at this point. Out of spite, if nothing else.
Good. If an industry won’t compensate its workers properly, it should be burned to the ground, literally and metaphorically.
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Dream outcome: studios go bankrupt and then the strikers pool resources to buy assets and start their own worker-owned film studios
It’s not as cool as you think. Activision and EA both started essentially that way for games, but became what they are now as soon as the founders started leaving. It works great for a while, then they just become what they opposed.
I’m pretty sure it was Ben Affleck or Matt Damon who I heard on a podcast recently that was doing this very thing.
A lot of people worked very hard on the movie to make it happen, and it did well because it’s a good movie made by good people, and it’s wrong for WB to take the full credit for that. So, give the people what they deserve for their hard work, and the strike ends. Simple as that.
But, I’m realistic, and at this point it’s clear that WB doesn’t feel pressured enough to listen to reason yet. So, help us make them listen to reason, and keep supporting the strike in any way you can.
I went and saw Barbie twice. I caught the show when my fiancée was out of town, then took her out to see it when she got back. The movie works on a lot of levels and I thought it was well done. Great writing, great cast.
Why is the world topsy turvy? And why do we allow it?
Humans are good at compartmentalizing. The same father that shouts at a ref over a bad call in a tee ball game will happily support industries that will give his child cancer as long as he doesn’t have to think too hard about it.
Profit is amoral. If we want a fair and just society, we must ignore profit motives and accept the cost of being civilized. The capitalist will demonize unions and taxes and regulation, because those things cost the capitalist profit. And the capitalist is right, those things are the enemy.
Unfortunately, the capitalist has also convinced everyone else that we’re supposed to be on his side. The capitalist is not on our side.
Listen to meatbridge friends. Don’t turn away from the truth.
there’s an old saying : “buy real estate when there’s blood on the street”. consider this for a while.
But what happens when banks won’t underwrite property insurance because of climate disasters?
Complaining about nothing. Amazing.
Really updating us on progress report!
More work to be done here tho
ohh no! not enough!
Me having stock from before the merge: I’m Never Gonna Financially Recover from This
Oh no they lost 25% of their income. How horrible. Im gonna cry while buying some barbie movie merch.
With new covid coming, this couldn’t have happened at a better time. These fucks would never try home streaming again for their movies.
Maybe y’all (Warner Bros) should do something about it.
“Only” 1.7 billion for 3 months…
