Media Titan Barry Diller Delivers Doomsday Forecast: Actor and Writer Strikes Could Lead to Hollywood’s ‘Absolute Collapse’
Media titan Barry Diller delivered a devastating forecast for Hollywood, if the writers and actors’ strikes are not resolved soon.
Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday, Diller — the head of the media conglomerate IAC, who previously served as CEO for Paramount and 20th Century Fox — weighed in on the state of the industry amid the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes. Diller called the current challenges facing the industry a “perfect storm.”
“You had Covid, which sent people home to watch streaming television and killed theaters,” Diller said. “You’ve had the results of huge investments in streaming which have produced all these losses for all these companies that are now kind of retrenching. So at this moment, it’s kind of a perfect storm.”
Diller called for a settlement deadline of September 1, and said there could be catastrophic ramifications if the strikes extend into the fall.
“Who cares about Hollywood?” Diller said — referencing what he believes to be overriding public sentiment on the issue. “Who cares about it? But the truth is, this is a huge business! Both domestically and for world exporters. … But these conditions will potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry.”
The IAC chief acknowledged the “existential issues” at play, and said there is “no trust between the parties” — which could prolong the strikes.
Amid criticism of Disney CEO Bob Iger calling the demands from actors and writers “disturbing,” Diller argued that the top actors and the top executives are all disproportionately compensated and floated an out-of-the-box proposal designed to ease tensions between the two sides.
“Everybody’s probably overpaid at the top end,” Diller said. “The one idea I had is to say, as a good faith measure, both the executives and the most-paid actors should take a 25 percent pay cut to try and narrow the difference between those who get highly paid and those that don’t.”
Watch above, via CBS.
