As Hollywood actors strike, here’s why A-listers are next in the firing line

Members of the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild walk a picket line outside Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, California, on 14 July 2023. Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images

Everybody knows who the baddies are in the Hollywood strikes story. It’s the fatcats, the studio bosses, the streamer heads counting their piles of cash while the little people get squashed.

This is undoubtedly true. Hollywood is now run not by aspiring creatives but multinational conglomerates who, as one insider told me this weekend, aim simply for the bottom line. Their business is stripping industries for parts and then flipping the husks once they’re done.