Victoria’s film commissioner says capital region film industry workers are facing “a pretty scary summer” after a second Hollywood union joined the picket lines this week.
On Thursday, the 160,000-strong actors union SAG-AFTRA announced it would go on strike after talks collapsed between the union and an industry group representing some of the biggest entertainment companies, including Disney, Netflix, and Amazon.
Hollywood writers with the Writers Guild of America have been on strike since May for better pay, job security, and regulations on the use of artificial intelligence for scriptwriting in an industry transformed by streaming.
Around 2,000 people directly and indirectly employed by Victoria’s film industry — which heavily depends on Hollywood money — will be affected by the strikes, including local actors and film-adjacent industries such as caterers, film commissioner Kathleen Gilbert said.
“We don’t have anything on the books at this point for the rest of the summer,” she said, adding that it was a good year for filming before the labour action started.
Victoria’s film industry — the largest in B.C. outside the Lower Mainland — experienced a record three years of busy filming as productions chose to work in locations closer to Los Angeles due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The second season of Syfy TV show Reginald the Vampire, one of only two productions set to shoot in Victoria this summer for American networks, wrapped up their production earlier than usual in anticipation of the strike, Gilbert said.
“Pretty early on, they went from a five-day week to a six-day week so that they could be completely finished before the strike,” Gilbert said.
A Hallmark movie in production in Victoria this summer, Guiding Emily, also wrapped up before the strike, on June 30.
It is unlikely that more U.S. film industry projects will arrive in Canada until the two labour disputes are resolved.
Gilbert said she hopes the issues will be resolved quickly and that the terms of the agreements will be fair and equitable to all parties.
Creative B.C., an independent society created and funded by the provincial government to support B.C.’s creative industries, said in a statement Thursday that the effects of the SAG-AFTRA strike will ripple across North American and have a significant impact on British Columbia’s film and television industry.
Meanwhile, the commission is trying to keep film crews busy.
“Unless we can get some Canadian shows, and some reality shows — some of those shows that do not deal with the [striking] unions, then it’s going to be a very slow summer,” Gilbert said.
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