As a Kiswahili adage goes, “When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” In Hollywood, the elephants are fighting–and British film and TV workers are suffering to an extent that I have never seen in my 30 years working in the media industry. Whatever the outcome, it will have consequences for years to come.
The world’s largest film studios and television broadcasters in the world are locked in a seemingly intractable industrial dispute with the most powerful actor and writer unions in the world, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), and the Writers Guild of America (WGA).
