And the companies that act as middlemen.

If they pay a vfx studio 10 million, not even a tenth of that goes to salary. And what does, gets sucked up by executives at the company.

That system should at least mean steady work for the artists, but then they only have jobs while the company has a project

Actually, it's either a) big name actors who are demanding more money upfront because of disappearing residuals, or b) shooting in expensive locations. There are many such cases of both of these factors coming together to create a perfect storm too.

Say what you will about Sound Of Freedom, but that movie was made on a $14.5 million dollar budget by an indie studio shooting at economic locations while not overpaying the main cast. If this was made by a major studio, I bet it would cost about $75 million at least to make the same looking movie with equivalent-calibre actors and similar looking locations. (It should also be pointed out that Angel Studios has already agreed to the Hollywood unions' terms, so it's likely they have already been giving their actors and writers fair residuals for awhile now, due to their low resistance to the terms.)