Paramount Chief Bob Bakish Is “Optimistic” A few SAG-AFTRA Deal In “Close to Time period”

Bob Bakish, president and CEO of Paramount World, seems assured SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers will attain a deal to finish the continuing actors strike.

Talking on the worldwide tv convention MIPCOM on Tuesday, the place he acquired the 2023 character of the 12 months award, Bakish mentioned regardless of negotiations breaking down final week, he was optimistic the business will see an finish to the three-month-long strike motion.

“[The actors] are on the desk,” Bakish mentioned. “Sure issues broke down a bit final week, however they wish to be again on the desk. And we’ll get there as a result of in the end, all of us wish to get again to work … I’m optimistic we’ll get there as an business within the close to time period.”

In Might, shortly after the Writers Guild of America went on strike, Bakish mentioned on an organization earnings name that Paramount had been making ready for the potential for labor motion and outlined how the studio’s slate of recent releases, its giant library and robust offshore manufacturing operations would assist it climate the work stoppage. In August, for Paramount’s second quarter earnings name, Paramount CFO Naveen Chopra mentioned the strikes — each the actors and the now-resolved WGA labor motion — would “considerably” enhance free money circulate on the studio as a result of Paramount wouldn’t want to fulfill its commitments to creators who remained on the picket strains.

Bakish mentioned whereas it was true for Paramount “and for the business writ giant” that the strikes have helped money circulate on the studios, he mentioned the influence has been overstated.

“And look, we’re taking part in the hand we have been dealt. Once more, we didn’t wish to be [here],” he famous. “The notion that [the strikes] saved the corporate is wildly overstating [the facts].”

The Paramount World boss solely briefly touched on the SAG-AFTRA strike in his MIPCOM keynote dialogue, preferring as an alternative to concentrate on the studio’s worldwide enterprise, specifically its international licensing operations. Paramount, in contrast to a few of its opponents, mentioned Bakish, was betting on the worldwide content material licensing ecosystem.

“It is a enterprise that has vital strategic and monetary worth for Paramount, a enterprise that we’ve at all times been dedicated to,” mentioned Bakish. “Whereas our friends have been pulling again content material, and placing up walled gardens, we by no means left.”

Bakish referred to as the licensing enterprise, whereby a studio sells off native rights to its programming to worldwide companions, was a “worthwhile, multibillion-dollar enterprise for Paramount and it’s a vital driver of our broader technique to make and distribute content material with huge international enchantment.”

A few of Paramount’s studio opponents, together with Warner Bros., initially moved away from the standard licensing enterprise, pulling again international rights to their reveals and sequence as they rolled out their very own streaming companies worldwide. Most now, nonetheless, are returning to the content material licensing fold.

Bakish confirmed that 2023 shall be Paramount’s “peak funding 12 months” in streaming and that 2024 will see “vital earnings development” pushed by “a big drop in streaming losses.”

Whereas he insisted Paramount stays dedicated to its direct-to-consumer enterprise by way of in-house streamer Paramount+, significantly in key markets such because the U.S. and U.Okay. however that the studio was taking a extra bespoke strategy to its worldwide facet of its enterprise.

“There was continued dialogue about streaming and, and the robustness of that enterprise and profitability and all of that,” mentioned Bakish. “Now individuals like easy solutions and what was invoked as a easy reply was the best way to be in streaming was [to be] one hundred pc owned and operated DTC [Direct to Consumer] in each market world wide. And I feel the fact is, frankly, no, the fact just isn’t that straightforward. We consider and are starting to reveal, {that a} extra multifaceted strategy to streaming, which embraces partnerships, is extra fiscally accountable and in the end a extra financially highly effective technique to unlock the overall addressable market.”

Bakish, who has led Paramount since 2019 and has overseen the studio’s transformation by way of the Viacom and CBS merger, mentioned the studio was centered on “content material, prospects and Paramount,” discovering out tips on how to “serve customers, leveraging nice content material on a multi-platform foundation to create worth for our firm” whereas transitioning to a brand new world the place conventional distribution fashions, significantly the cable TV mannequin.