Aaron Paul speaks up against Netflix for the Breaking Bad movie, El Camino

Zero, nada, not a thing. If anyone wonders how much did Aaron Paul earn for the Breaking Bad movie since its premiere on Netflix, the answer is that: little more than a hole in the pocket. The Jesse Pinkman actor got paid for his performance, but once ‘El Camino’ was released on Netflix, he didn’t see a dollar of royalties. This was announced by Paul himself from the strike of actors and writers that shakes Hollywood these days, and in which he has been seen protesting for his rights.

“I don’t get a piece from Netflix on ‘Breaking Bad’ to be totally honest and that’s insane to me. Shows live forever on these streamers and it goes through waves. I saw just the other day that ‘Breaking Bad’ was trending on Netflix and it’s such common sense. I think a lot of these streamers know that they have been getting away with not paying people a fair wage, and now it’s time to pony up.”

The reasons for the strike: AI and streaming

Aaron Paul’s complaint is one of two major demands by actors and screenwriters in this strike. streaming platforms do not pay the royalties that have traditionally been paid in film and television for each broadcast of the same work since they work differently (they are content available on demand, and not programmed or scheduled). As the numbers of viewers and viewings are not fully shared either, it’s not known how much they generate for each production, which is how they have been excusing themselves for zero profit sharing. Many believe that the time has come to be transparent and regulate it.

And in addition to streaming rights, the other source of conflict is the emerging threat of AI to the profession. In recent months we have been seeing how bots and artificial intelligence have proliferated, taking the original scripts of series like ‘Seinfeld’ and creating from them new, random and infinite chapters free of charge and without permission of the authors.

The WGA (Writers Guild of America) therefore demands that the use of artificial intelligence be regulated and prohibiting artificial intelligence from rewriting any material from the writers or being trained from previous work to imitate a style and create new texts with it. The main television studios have denied the lawsuit and have even rejected the union’s counter-proposal which consisted of holding annual meetings to discuss advances in technology, so we’ll see how this historic strike ends.