Before the internet, how people who made movies were paid was a relatively straight forward process, although Hollywood does have a history of creative accounting. Not all movies make money and the ones that do help subsize the cost of those that do not. In Hollywood and around the country where there are movie film hubs, being in the industry from a non acting job can be a good paying job. There are superstar actors with large salaries and the rest of the people doing a better than middle income job. There are hundreds of people who work around and within a movie and they are the ones on strike.

The strike is by the screen writers or the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA unions and they are after 3 aspects – a wage boost, a greater participation of income from streaming views and protection against replacement by artificial intelligence or AI.

The Director’s Guild has signed a 3-year agreement and they cannot be replaced by AI.

In the music industry, if a song is heard on the radio, the radio station sends money to the record company who sends money to the artist or residuals. In the movie industry the residuals are good for TV and DVDs, but less for streaming services. As more people stream video content, the residuals are less, will people pay more for the service to give higher residuals?

In terms of AI, you may have heard or you will hear more every year that many jobs will be affected by AI, the jobs known as the creative ones are only now coming to the forefront. In one interview, a suggestion was for people in the background to be paid for one day, then their image would be CGI or AI for the rest of the movie. It is hard to make a living as an extra if that happens. We will see what happens, but we will see more job changes in the near future.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, ideally you want the companies you invested in to embrace the latest technology to benefit the company. The rise of the technology means many people will be displaced or jobs changed and there are few solutions for them, when we look at the government in Washington, some of them live in different world. From an investor perspective, you want the company to embrace change and move with the new funding models to generate profits to pay dividends.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.