Hollywood strike could end ‘entire industry’: former Paramount CEO

Diller appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" and predicted that the writers' and actors' guild strike could lead to an entertainment industry downfall, saying, "T]here doesn't seem to be enough trust and energy to get it settled soon."

"[If] it doesn't get settled until Christmas or so, then next year, there's not going to be any programs for anybody to watch. So, you're going to see subscriptions get pulled, which is going to reduce the revenue of all these movie companies."

"These conditions will potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry," he added.

The union organization, the Writer's Guild of America (WGA), began striking on May 2, 2023. WGA was joined by SAG-AFTRA the next month in June. SAG-AFTRA is a union comprised of actors and many other entertainment content creators.

Concerns of the workers are related to AI replacing writers, compensation structure, and minimum employees on teams.

One of the proposals of the union was that the "writer's room" for a television series had to have at least a "minimum staff of 6 writers (including 4 Writer-Producers)."

Another proposal is that during the production of a television series, writers wanted to be "guaranteed at least 10 consecutive weeks of work" and "3 weeks per episode."

These employment minimum proposals were refused in the initial agreement by employers of WGA.

The strike has been ongoing, and no settlement has been able to be agreed upon and big-name actors, such as Ben Stiller, just recently joined on picket lines with the writers.

Diller added, "The problem with settlement in this case is there is no trust between the parties."

"You have the actors union saying, 'How dare these 10 people who run these companies earn all this money and won't pay us.' Well, if you look at it on the other side, the top 10 actors get paid more than the top 10 executives."

"Everybody is probably overpaid at the top end," Diller said.

He suggested that the top executives and actors in the industry get a 25 percent pay cut in order to appease the lower-level employees on strike.