How Hollywood's Strike is Hurting San Diego Comic-Con

<div class="block">The ongoing writers and actors strike in Hollywood is beginning to have ramifications on the broader entertainment industry. Cheddar News senior reporter Michelle Castillo talked about the impact the strike is having on the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con.</div>

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And the actors and writers strike have put Hollywood on pause again while it might be a little bit before we start noticing a lack of shows and movies to watch. We are starting to feel the first impacts China news. Senior reporter Michelle Castillo is here to break down the latest. Let's start with the impact on the fan events of the year Comic Con in San Diego, Michelle, we know part of the S A after strike involves not allowing actors to make those promotional appearances, but that's what we love about Comic Con. So how is this affecting the, well S DC C is shaping up to be one of the most non star studded events in years, Hanna and that's not great news but for the fans, the industry and also for the city of San Diego. So many companies have already pulled out or majorly scaled back from promoting shows at the convention because of fears the SA A strike would cause some disruptions already. We heard that Marvel Netflix HBO Sony Pictures and Universal Pictures were backing out early July, but I took a look at the most recent list of cancellations and it's getting even more scant. So let's take Saturday, for example, that's traditionally the busiest day of the convention. So that Seventies show Abbott Elementary and Rice's interview with The Vampire from A MC, they've all pulled their panels and as someone who's gone to at least 10 San Diego Comic Cons. So I, I grew up in San Diego covering it first from my high school newspaper and I've even covered it for cheddar. It feels like it's going back to it. Roots of more of a comic convention now, this has been a huge debate in the community. It's sure to please some of the die hard fans, but it's alienating. I would say the majority and one of the big upsets is the refund deadline, which was actually May 12th. So there's actually a lot of angry people online. Now let's also think about the impact on San Diego. This event brought in $1.2 billion in 2022 for the local San Diego economy. So a lot of businesses are concerned. It's a huge money maker for the city and people were counting it, counting on it for jobs, whether that's increased tips at restaurants or people taking more Uber rides. I love seeing high school Michelle and those pictures. And Netflix also reported earnings yesterday, Michelle, did they say anything about how the strike is impacting them? Well, there's one thing that we really noticed is that the fact that Netflix is gonna have more free cash flow than expected. And that's mainly because they aren't spending as much as the content. So it said it is expecting $5 billion in free cash flow instead of expected the 3.5 billion. And according to Co CEO Ted Sarandos, it still has a lot of content that it can still release. So it's going to be a while before the company needs actors and writers to come back, which is bad news for the unions. But CDOS did say he is hoping the strike will end in a call with investors. He pointed out that his father was in a union and he the impacts when his father went on strike. So Rando said, quote, this strike is not an outcome that we wanted, we make deals all the time. We are constantly at the table, negotiating with writers with directors, with actors and producers, with everyone across the industry and we very much hope to reach an agreement by now. Now, the one reason why we really pay attention to Netflix is the fact that they're the first media company to really report earnings. So we kind of get a pulse on the business networks. And one of the big issues, a lot of the streamers were facing this year was this concept of free cash flow. Basically how much money they have in the bank already HBO. And also NBC Universal had said that this was going to be one of their least profitable years because they were spending money on content and they were going to try to scale back. But now here's a built in excuse not to spend money because there's no new shows filming at this time. So it's actually benefiting the streamers, which is bad news for the unions.