Studio executives are just realizing now that actors promotion helps the box office

It is mind-numbingly stupid to watch as studio executives slowly realize that they’re the villains in the still-ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Not only that, those same executives have lived inside their own asses for so long, it’s like explaining very basic concepts to a very small and very stupid child. Yes, Bob Iger, “actors promoting their films” helps the box office. Yes, Michael de Luca, your films will perform poorly if you have to cancel all of your premieres. You have all of these studio chiefs throwing tantrums that actors on strike are refusing to promote struck work and it’s affecting the studios’ bottom lines. Here’s the biggest “no sh-t, Sherlock” story you’ll possibly ever read.

Across Hollywood, marketers are having to scrap media tours amid the dual Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes, with guilds forbidding their members from promoting any movie from a struck company. Now, the box office is feeling the impact as films open without the full participation of stars and writers. Several studio sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that a movie’s earnings at the box office could be hurt by as much as 15 percent because of the dramatic falloff in talent-driven publicity.

[TMNT]’s voice cast alone includes Ayo Edebiri, Maya Rudolph, Seth Rogen, John Cena, Rose Byrne, Natasia Demetriou, Giancarlo Esposito, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd and Post Malone. The new TMNT faced a double whammy, since Rogen is also one of the film’s writers and has been unable to bank any press since the writers strike commenced more than 100 days ago. “It was bizarre,” says one source close to the movie of the July 29 screening. “Can you imagine what the group photo [of stars] would have been like on the carpet?”

Turtles, which debuted Aug. 2, a Wednesday, posted a respectable five-day domestic opening of $43.1 million. In terms of sheer dollars, insiders believe the movie will take a hit of $7 million to $10 million because of the publicity restrictions.

A top marketing executive at another studio notes that no amount of paid advertising can make up for the kind of awareness a star can ignite if a personal social media post, interview or other promotional bit, goes viral. “Not having stars to do publicity for your movies is a huge detriment to the overall campaign,” says the exec. “You lose the cultural impact of having talent talk about the film. Some movies wouldn’t have worked anyway, but they had more of a shot.”

[From THR]

The only interesting thing here is arguably that “studio sources” even bothered to put a number to it. The studios think they’re experiencing a 15% decline in the box office because actors aren’t doing promotion during the strike. So… one could argue that the studios are vastly underpaying actors for what they do, correct? 15% of a gross box office is a huge number monetarily, so these studios agree that actors and writers should be paid more, and that they have completely valid reasons for going on strike?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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