The Screengrab

Sitting down to watch an extremely protracted season finale of Lost last night reminded us of how extremely vital it is for us to never again allow our entertainment be interrupted by a labor stoppage.  I don't think any of us will ever forget the horrible suffering we all experienced, wondering whether or not G.I. Joe:  The Movie was going to be completed.  With the writer's strike finally resolved after many, many bad late-night monologues, we are now left wondering:  will we have to relive the nightmare this summer with an actor's strike?

Part of the problem was solved on Wednesday, when AFTRA -- the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists -- signed a tentative contract, good through 2011, that guarantees that their membership will avoid a work stoppage.  As with the writer's strike, the major issue at odds was compensation for 'new media' appearances, mostly internet and other forms of digital media; both permissions and compensation were ironed out in advance of a strike.  This has put significant pressure on the Screen Actor's Guild, the largest actor's union in America, to adopt the same contract. 

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As you probably know from the last hundred or so articles about the very big business of video games, they're no longer a niche market.  The biggest titles routinely outgross Hollywood movies, and major motion picture studios are beginning to tailor their releases so as not to conflict with the street dates of huge video game titles like Halo and Guitar Hero.  More and more, video games are being treated like movies:  the scripts get more complex, the special effects get more elaborate, the money gets bigger, and release dates become more important.  There's one way in which the two industries aren't exactly the same, though, and that's in the way they pay their actors.

The bigger video games get, the more they begin to attract brand-name Hollywood actors to do voice work.  Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise pioneered this, getting big stars like Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Fonda and Ray Liotta to provide the voices of characters in previous installments.  This time around, with the critically acclaimed and best-selling Grand Theft Auto IV, they went the opposite direction, hiring a cast of relative unknowns to play Eastern European immigrant Niko  Bellic and his rotating cast of friends and enemies.  But one thing has held true, as the New York Timesrecently reported:  unlike with television, film, and all other media, actors in digital media receive no royalties or residuals for their work.  As a result, Michael Hollick (who plays Niko Bellic, and received $100,000 for a little more than a year's work) finds himself starring in the most popular entertainment product in America -- and isn't getting a single dime more than he was originally paid.    It's an unusual situation without an easy solution, and Hollick doesn't blame Rockstar -- he blames the Screen Actor's Guild, which hasn't been especially forward-looking in its negotiations over digital media.  Indeed, if predictions of an actor's strike this summer come to fruition, it's likely that, just as with the writer's strike earlier this year, digital media royalties and pay rates will be the central issue.  Meanwhile, Hollick and thousands of actors like him will have to suffer through getting no royalties for their video game work, regardless of the product's success.

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The writer's strike has only been over for a few short days, but Sunday's Oscars showed all too plainly the bitterness and recrimination that will likely haunt the motion picture industry for years to come.

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The Golden Globe Awards have come and gone with barely a whisper, except from depressingly enthusiastic media journalists who were falling all over themselves with excitement at the prospect of being on TV. But, to be fair, the Golden Globes have always been kind of a dud, occupying a nebulous funnel of quasi-respectability somewhere in between the Emmys and the Peoples' Choice Awards. The big question on everyone's lips, with the Writer's Guild of America strike entering its third month, is: will the Oscars be cancelled?

MSN seems to think they just might. With the Golden Globes allowed to rot on the vine, their analysis is that it's more likely than not that if a deal isn't reached, the producers won't be willing to risk boycotts by big stars and put on the sort of joyless press conference they did on Sunday. While industry spokesmen are wearing their hopeful faces — AMPAS executive director Bruce Davis says production plans for the Academy Awards are proceeding as usual, and "at this stage we are still making our plan as normal" — insiders are less so, and there's a more than average degree of confidence that the 80th annual Academy Awards presentation will be the biggest non-event since the 1994 World Series.

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