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Taylor Swift might sing about being the problem, but her actions to secure permission to film her Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film might actually represent a solution to the stalemate that Hollywood studios and creatives find themselves in as a result of the ongoing WGA writers' and SAG-AFTRA actors' strikes.
The concert movie, which was shot over three nights at SoFi Stadium during Taylor Swift's Los Angeles performances, met all of SAG-AFTRA's demands in order to obtain an interim agreement to shoot and promote the film. Swift did this by bypassing the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) as a whole and dealing with SAG-AFTRA directly in negotiating the satisfactory deal. In doing so, Swift is painting a picture of how to move forward in Hollywood amidst the strike.
As the Writers Guild explained to its members in a recent contract negotiations email update, the guild is free to make deals with individual studios or independent producers, even if the AMPTP is unwilling as a whole to follow suit. There is no rule stipulating that the strike has to be resolved amongst all studios all at once. Whoever agrees to the terms put forth by the WGA and/or SAG-AFTRA is welcome to do so.
This is basically what Taylor Swift did in securing the rights to her sure-to-be-blockbuster film's deal. The film was self-funded with a reported $10 to $20 million from Swift herself, while Swift's parents worked directly with AMC Theaters on distribution. This means Swift's film was an independent production that agreed to adhere to SAG-AFTRA's demands — higher salaries for crew members and more generous streaming residuals. It also helped that Swift's picture is not a dramatic film (although she is a member of SAG-AFTRA for her acting work).
“She came to us and said she wanted to do this, but only if she could do it the right way under a union contract,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director and chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, speaking during a talk at the Toronto Independent Film Festival last week. “And we said, that’s great. And so she fulfilled all the same criteria as anybody else and has an interim agreement for that production.”
So if an independent producer wants to make a movie right now, it's as simple as agreeing to the terms put forward by the guilds and then negotiating distribution for the finished product. If Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour makes as much money at the box office as it's anticipated to, it will certainly be enticing for others to copy the blueprint (it won't be the first time that studios have parroted each other). Perhaps it will start as a few individual projects and work its way up to a whole studio, but eventually all of the streamers and major Hollywood players will be forced to follow suit if they don't want to get left behind.
