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Hollywood actors walk out over pay & AI worries

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Hollywood actors have announced they will join a strike by screenwriters in the industry’s biggest shutdown for more than 60 years.
Some 160,000 performers will stop work at midnight in Los Angeles, bringing to a halt most US film and TV productions.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) wants streaming giants to agree to a fairer split of profits and better working conditions.

It also wants to protect actors from being usurped by digital replicas.

The union is seeking guarantees that artificial intelligence (AI) and computer-generated faces and voices will not be used to replace actors.

While the strike lasts, actors cannot appear in films or even promote movies that they have already made.

As a result, stars Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt left the premiere of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in London on Thursday night as the strike was declared.

The film’s director, Christopher Nolan, told the cinema audience that they were “off to write their picket signs”, adding that he supported them in their struggle.

Several actors took to Instagram to voice their support for the strike, including Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk, Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon and Hollywood veteran Jamie Lee Curtis.

Picketing will begin on Friday morning outside the California headquarters of Netflix, before moving on to Paramount, Warner Bros and Disney.

To address concerns about the use of AI, the big studios have offered what they call a “ground-breaking proposal” that would protect the digital likeness of actors and require their consent when digital replicas are used in performances, or alterations are made.

But the union rejected the offer, made by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

The SAG’s national executive director and chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, said it was unacceptable.

“They propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan of their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity,” he said. “If you think that’s a ground-breaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”

For films in production, the strike means a large portion of work will become impossible. Even in cases in which filming has already been completed, actors will be unavailable for re-shoots and other essential elements of the filmmaking process.

TV shows that are still being filmed will also largely have to stop, although in some cases side deals could be struck between performers and producers to allow work to continue.

Top Hollywood stars will not be able to attend events to promote new and upcoming releases. Events including the Emmys and Comic-Con may be rescheduled or scaled back.

The AMPTP said the strike was “certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life”.

“The union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry,” its statement added.

The union is officially known as the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA.

Another of its demands of the streaming services is that actors should receive greater base pay and residuals – meaning payments made to actors from repeats of films and programmes they’ve starred in.

The strike includes tens of thousands of actors who receive significantly less pay for minor parts than their A-list colleagues.

“In the old model, they get residuals based on success,” Kim Masters, the editor-in-chief of the Hollywood Reporter, told the BBC. “In the new model, they don’t get to find out what’s going on behind the scenes, because the streamers don’t share.”

Fran Drescher, SAG’s president, said the strike came at a “very seminal moment” for actors in the industry.

“What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labour,” she said, “when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority, and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run.”

A separate strike by the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America demanding better pay and working conditions has been going since 2 May.

Some writers have turned to projects that are not covered by the contract between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

The “double strike” by both unions is the first since 1960, when the SAG was led by actor Ronald Reagan, long before he entered politics and became US president. The last strike by actors took place in 1980.

peaking during a gathering of industry leaders at an Idaho resort ahead of the SAG’s announcement on Thursday, Disney chief executive Bob Iger said the demands of both actors and writers were impractical and damaging to an industry still recovering from the pandemic.

“It’s very disturbing to me,” Mr Iger said. “This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption.”

A third union, the Directors Guild of America, successfully negotiated a contract in June and will not participate.

(BBC News)

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Squid Game’s Player 456 returns in season 2 trailer

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The first trailer for the second season of Squid Game has been released, thrusting viewers back into the deadly arena where Player 456 has returned to play once more.

Three years after his victory in the lethal series of children’s games Seong Gi-hun, played by actor Lee Jung-jae, returns as Player 456 and is joined by hundreds of new competitors – and tries to lead them to safety.

The first season of the South Korean drama followed a group of 456 people, desperate and in debt, fighting to the death for a huge cash prize.

It became Netflix’s biggest ever series launch, streamed by 111 million users in its first 28 days.

The trailer opens as the sinister masked guards welcome a new cast of characters to the competition.

They are despatched for their first game, also familiar from season one: Red Light Green Light.

In the game, players must advance toward the finish line while a giant mechanical doll has its back turned and freeze when it turns around – or face being shot dead.

Gi-hun only just survived the game in season one, launching himself over the finish line, and this time around tries to coach the players to safety.

But things take a lethal turn when a player moves after being told a bee has landed on her, and is then shot in the head.

As in season one, the players get to vote to stop the game or keep playing. While Gi-hun encourages them to focus on “getting out of this place,” the players ignore his pleas.

“One more game,” they chant, as the cash prize fills a giant piggy-bank dangling above them.

Director Hwang Dong-hyuk said: “Gi-hun’s endeavour to find out who these people are and why they do what they do is the core story of season two.”

He told Reuters news agency that the season would feature “more intriguing games” and a larger cast of characters than the debut season.

Also returning is the black-masked mysterious Front Man, who oversees the games, and Hwang Jun-ho, the police detective that broke into the games last season to search for his missing brother.

Hwang Dong-hyuk previously said he felt “a lot of pressure” on how to make season two “even better” after the show’s runaway success.

In its first four weeks, viewers spent 1.65 billion hours watching Squid Game, according to Netflix.

It followed efforts by the streaming giant to increase its offering of international shows and invest in South Korean dramas.

This time Netflix will be hoping to mirror season one’s success as it comes under pressure to show what will power growth in the years ahead, as its already massive reach makes finding new subscribers more difficult.

Netflix has announced that the final, third season of Squid Game will be released in 2025.

The second series of Squid Game will be released on Netflix on 26 December 2024.

(BBC News)

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TikTok founder becomes China’s richest man

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The surging global popularity of TikTok has seen the co-founder of its parent company, ByteDance, become China’s richest person.

According to a rich list produced by the Hurun Research Institute, Zhang Yiming is now worth $49.3bn (£38bn) – 43% more than in 2023.

The 41-year-old stepped down from his role in charge of the company in 2021, but is understood to own around 20% of the firm.

TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps in the world, despite deep concerns in some countries about its ties to the Chinese state.

While both companies insist they are independent of the Chinese government, the US intends to ban TikTok in January 2025 unless ByteDance sells it.

Despite facing that intense pressure in the US, ByteDance’s global profit increased by 60% last year, driving up Zhang Yiming’s personal fortune.

“Zhang Yiming is the 18th new Number One we have had in China in just 26 years,” said head of Hurun Rupert Hoogewerf.

“The US, by comparison, has only four Number Ones: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

“This gives an indication of some of the dynamism in the Chinese economy.”

Tech fortunes
Mr Zhang is not the only representative of China’s huge tech sector on the list.

Pony Ma, boss of the tech conglomerate, Tencent, is third on the list with an estimated personal wealth amounting to £44.4bn.

But their fortunes are not just explained by their companies successes – their rivals have made less in a year in which China’s economy has sputtered.

In fact, only approximately 30% of the people on the list had an increase in their net worth – the rest saw a decline.

“The Hurun China Rich List has shrunk for an unprecedented third year running, as China’s economy and stock markets had a difficult year,” said Mr Hoogewerf.

“The number of individuals on the list was down by 12% in the past year to just under 1100 individuals and 25% from the high point of 2021.”

He said the data showed it had been a good year for smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, while the green energy market had stumbled.

“Solar panel, lithium battery and EV makers have had a challenging year, as competition intensified, leading to a glut, and the threat of tariffs added to uncertainties,” he said.

“Solar panel makers saw their wealth down as much as 80% from the 2021 peak, whilst battery and EV makers were down by half and a quarter respectively.”

(BBC News)

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Chalamet makes surprise appearance at look-alike event

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Timothée Chalamet has stunned fans after making a surprise appearance at a lookalike contest for the actor.

The Wonka star crashed the event in New York City attracting a chorus of screaming fans.

Chalamet was seen posing for pictures with his curly-haired doppelgangers during a brief appearance at Washington Square Park.

The city’s police moved on the crowded event which attracted hundreds of people.

Variety reported that Chalamet sneaked his way through the crowd hiding behind a mask and baseball hat, before creeping up to two lookalikes who had been posing for photos, sparking shrieks across the park.

The contest, organised by YouTuber Anthony Po, promised a $50 (£39) prize for the winner and had attracted thousands of RSVPs to an online invite.

A fan of the Call Me by Your Name and Dune actor, Lauren Klas, described what made a good Chalamet. “It’s all in the nose,” he told AP news agency.

“All of his bone structure, really.”

Contestants were also asked about their French language skills, plans to make the world a better place and romantic intentions with Kylie Jenner, who the star is rumoured to be dating, AP reported.

Eventually Miles Mitchell, 21, from Staten Island, was crowned winner dressed in a Willy Wonka outfit, before he tossed candy to the crowd from a briefcase.

Earlier this month, a new trailer was released for A Complete Unknown which will see the star depict Bob Dylan.

The biopic is set in the 1960s and follows Dylan’s rise to the top of the charts.

The film is set to be released in December in the US and in January in the UK.

(BBC News)

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