New Projects Casting - AEA Open Access to Remain - Movie Theatre Tiered Pricing

By Abigail Hardin, February 14, 2023

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Happy Tuesday, UTD!

I hope that you are surrounded by love today! Do something for yourself today, buy some flowers, take a long walk in the sunshine, or indulge in a luxurious bubble bath. And most importantly, as you go about your day and night, help spread a little more love and kindness to those you meet. Happy Valentine's Day! 💘

We had a great time discussing SEEKING REPRESENTATION 101 last week with Ripley-Grier! If you missed the workshop or still have a burning question for Annie or me, sign up for our next free workshop! This is one of our most popular workshop topics and now is a great time to focus on a new representation campaign!

February 22, 2023 @ 3:00 PM EST — SEEKING REPRESENTATION 101 with Actors Connection

Blame it on the Super Bowl but the news cycle was a bit quiet this week. With all eyes on looking to commercials, Rhianna's pregnancy reveal, and oh yeah, the actual game there was little room for anything else. On to the news!

Create a great week! 💖

Actors' Equity Makes Open Access to Membership Permanent

Actors' Equity Association (AEA) has made its Open Access policy permanent. Now anyone who has worked one professional job (I.e. at a theatre under AEA's jurisdiction) can apply for membership. The union will further phase out its EMC program over the next three years as any performer who has EMC points can automatically join via Open Access.

This is great news for the accessibility of joining the union. But there are serious questions to consider before joining any performance union, even if you are eligible. We get asked about this a lot during our workshops. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. But to help you navigate that question, we recently published two blog posts on when & why to join AEA (or SAG-AFTRA). If you are considering joining either performance union I highly encourage you to check out these two blogs:

Streaming

Warner Bros. Discovery has decided to keep Discovery+ as a standalone streaming option and to offer a yet-to-be-named combined product of Discovery+ and HBO Max. Giving viewers the option of four different plans when you factor in the ad-supported tiers for both Discovery+ and the combined option.

Wall Street is happy Bob Iger is back at Disney+. His new strategy for the streamer moves away from overly ambitious new subscriber goals and instead focuses solely on profitability. Former CEO Bob Chapek had set unrealistic subscriber growth as his main focus. Iger seems determined to trim the fat and focus on increasing Disney's ARPUs (average revenue per user) and margins. Wall Street took note of this new strategy in a recent earnings report, and Disney stock prices saw a minor boost.

According to a new report, streamers have a narrow window of time to capture audiences with a new show, about two weeks. Data from 20 of the most popular shows released in the second half of 2022 shows that 15 of them had driven more than 75% of their total 51-day viewership in just the first 15 days of release. The only exception? Netflix's WEDNESDAY.

Much of WEDNESDAY's success was due to the viral social media response amongst Gen Z viewers. In fact, the report goes a step further and asserts that Gen Z is the key to longterm viewership success. And longterm viewership is what every streamer is after in order to reduce subscription cycling, where viewers sign up for a service just to watch one specific program, before canceling and moving on to another streamer.

We shared an article last week that looked at how comedy (multi-cams in particular) are having a moment. Channing Dungey, Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Television Group, sat down with Deadline for an in-depth interview about this resurgence and how Warner Bros. is further investing in comedy.

"People are looking to try to figure out how can we do more shows that lean into kind of that hard funny perspective because the lines of comedic drama and all of that has become a little bit blurry," she said. "As a country and as a world, we've been going through some really difficult, challenging times with Covid and the economy, the whole nine yards," she added. "When you look back at Ted Lasso, which really became a breakthrough success when we were all home in 2020, I think people are looking for things that make them laugh and things that are a little bit brighter, and things that make them feel a sense of community."

Movie Theatre Tiered Pricing

Earlier in the month, AMC announced that they are introducing tiered ticket prices. Meaning, AMC movie theatres will start to adopt a pricing model similar to live theatre where seats with prime views (center and middle) will cost a bit more and seats with worse sightlines will cost a little less than the standard ticket price. It's unclear which markets AMC will roll out first, but the company is looking to expand the program throughout 2023.

If this rubs you the wrong way you're not alone, Elijah Wood took to Twitter after the news broke and lambasted AMC for its new policy. "The movie theater is and always has been a sacred democratic space for all and this new initiative by @AMCTheatres would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income."

Acting Advice

There were several great articles this week from actors and directors on the art of acting. From expressing fear in horror films to studying countless additional skills for a single role, check out these articles below:

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Ohio's Cardinal School District has changed its tune after canceling a planned high school production of THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE due to "vulgarity" in the "dialogue and song lyrics ... not suitable for our preteen and teenage students." The district announced last week that the production was back on, and will now use author-approved substitutions to address the "offending" material. The school reportedly requested 23 revisions, all of which were granted by licensor Music Theatre International. It is not clear whether that list of requests went beyond the pre-approved alternate lyrics and dialogue made available by MTI, which removes obscenities and adjusts other content that could be inappropriate for younger performers.

On another note on the censorship war being waged in high schools across the country, a high school in Kansas has just banned THE LARAMIE PROJECT from its school curriculum. The work was one of three studied in Lansing High School's Social Justice Expository Unit in the senior-level English Composition class. A local mother petitioned that the script be removed from the curriculum after removing her daughter from the class in October 2022, alleging that the school was teaching critical race theory and, in statements made to FOX4, that students were being "trained to feel like victims and to be hopeless that they can change social justice or change injustice because we're not teaching them about the tools they have right there at their disposal to make a difference." Tectonic Theater Project is now making scripts available for free to the students of Lansing High School.

During an interview with Esquire UK last week, Idris Elba befuddled folks by stating he does not refer to himself as "a black actor." "Of course, I'm a member of the Black community," Elba said. "You say a prominent one. But when I go to America, I'm a prominent member of the British community. 'Oh, U.K.'s in the house!' If we spent half the time not talking about the differences but the similarities between us, the entire planet would have a shift in the way we deal with each other." He has since further clarified his statement via twitter.

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