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Hollywood's been hit with the biggest strikes in decades and the impact is being felt in Australia, with hundreds of cast and crew working on offshore productions affected.
The 160,000-member strong Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG_AFTRA) last month joined the Writers Guild of America in walking off the job after pay negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke down.
There are no signs of the stalemate ending anytime soon.
US film and TV veteran actor James Huang might be a world away in Melbourne, but he backs his union's decision to shut down Hollywood and productions across the world.
"I've been a SAG-AFTRA member since the 90s and this strike is entirely about fighting for working-class people," Mr Huang told 7.30.
"And it's entirely to do with studios taking advantage of actors' likeness with the AI, artificial intelligence, technology, and streaming and accountability for what actors live and breathe on, which is residual income.
"And the celebrities that are standing up and supporting the strike may be the face of it, because they are recognisable but it is not about celebrities, it is about the working class actor," he said.
Unions in the US and Australia are concerned about the dominance of movie studios and streaming platforms and the digital disruption that has changed the way we watch our favourite shows and movies.
Actors and writers have previously been able to rely on ongoing residual income from DVD sales and re-runs but they say that’s dried up since streaming platforms have muscled in.
James Huang might not be a household name but he's been in more than 100 films and TV shows like NCIS, Law and Order and Will and Grace, Young Rock and more recently La Brea and Fisk.
He said he's gone from getting multiple cheques in dollars to fractions of cents.
"Somewhere maybe five to eight years ago, I started to get literally zero cent cheques, paper cheques sent to me in the mail," Mr Huang said.
"Now there's an online accounting where you can actually view it and you just see rows and rows and rows of your shows that you've started.
"And then in films that you've been in, and it'll say, internet streams and $0.00."
Streamers disrupting the industry
Peter Mattessi, board member of the Australian Writers' Guild, said the disruption of streamers has made making a career as a writer much tougher.
"The American writers are going on strike because of this vast change in the way television has been commissioned and broadcast has changed the way writers are contracted and employed.
Mr Mattessi said streamers are also employing fewer writers to work on shows with much shorter runs resulting in less money and fewer career opportunities.
"Previously the amount of money that you could make writing a TV show would have a long tail, you get small payments that over time add up to a substantial amount of money," Mr Mattessi said.
"Now those payments don't exist if your show goes on a streaming service.
"And in some cases, the streamers are buying them out for much less than you would get from them in the long term. But in Australia frequently, they're just not compensating for those at all," he said.
In Australia two offshore productions on the Gold Coast, Mortal Kombat 2 and Apples Never Fall, have been paused because of the US strikes.
About 800 people employed on the two productions have been stood down without pay, according to the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA).
"Whilst our work might have been paused or ceased because of the strike, we stand in solidarity because we know that fatigue, job security, AI protections are everyone's problem," MEAA organiser Michelle Rae told 7.30.
"So for our crew, they were expecting to be on the jobs for three, six, eight months, that's now money that they don't have, that's bills they can't pay."
The first casualty of the US strikes in Australia was Apple TV's $180 million remake of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
The production was shut down in June citing the writers' strike, affecting about 700 cast and crew who were to be employed by Metropolis.
Docklands Studios has been left only half booked, and what's been described as the world's largest virtual production studio built with $12.5 million in Victorian government funding is in maintenance.
Supply chain side businesses like prop shop Prop-A-Ganda have also been left in the lurch.
"A lot of people got work out of it or were waiting to get work out of it and that was going to be a good one to three years of income for somebody and the potential for us to hire," Tristan Macleod, manager of Prop-A-Ganda, told 7.30.
"Because this industry is always feast or famine anyway.
"So it's a bit of a blow because we don't know next when the big money's going to come in to help for us to pay rent or keep going," he said.
The US actors' and writers' strikes have also pushed back the release of The Dry 2 starring SAG-AFTRA member Eric Bana and left other completed productions without stars to promote them.
Calls for Australian content quotas
Federal and state governments have spent billions in tax rebates and cash subsidies to lure big-budget movies and shows to film in Australia over the past 15 years.
Concerns raised by the US strikes come as the Australian government considers tougher laws for those companies including local content quotas.
"If we base our industry around attracting huge international productions, then as soon as the Czech Republic is cheaper, or Mexico is cheaper, or Belgium is cheaper, they'll go there," Mr Mattessi said.
While streamers have had big global hits with Australian shows like Netflix's Heartbreak High reboot, the Australian Writers' Guild has called for local content quotas for streamers of at least 20 per cent.
"They don't have to make any Australian content at all, they make somehow much not that much," Mr Mattessi said.
"Which is why it's so important for us to have some sort of local content requirements on those international streamers to keep our industry alive," he said.
"So what we need to do is ensure that we are continuing to produce our own content."
If the issues caused by the digital disruption of streaming platforms aren't addressed, Mr Mattessi fears there'll be more at stake than just the jobs of those in the industry.
"Without getting too romantic about it stories for time immemorial have been told to help people understand the world and understand why we are the way we are," Mr Mattessi said.
"And if we don't have that then we lose connection completely with who we are as Australian people."
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