Hollywood actors poised to strike after SAG-AFTRA negotiations fail
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A historic double strike that will effectively shut down Hollywood appears imminent after a union representing nearly all TV and film actors failed to secure a new contract with major studios by a midnight Wednesday deadline. Sign up for Unboxed, a pop-up newsletter on the best memes, coverage and buzz around the “Barbie” movie. ArrowRight The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) announced overnight that its negotiating committee had voted unanimously to recommend its 160,000 members strike, after weeks of negotiations with companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Warner Bros. disintegrated.
SAG-AFTRA will hold a news conference at noon Los Angeles time, after its national board votes on whether to make the strike official, joining an ongoing walkout by Hollywood writers for the first time in 63 years.
“The studios and streamers have implemented massive unilateral changes in our industry’s business model, while at the same time insisting on keeping our contracts frozen in amber,” SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement, adding: “Their refusal to meaningfully engage with our key proposals and the fundamental disrespect shown to our members is what has brought us to this point. The studios and streamers have underestimated our members’ resolve, as they are about to fully discover.”
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The union’s president, Fran Drescher, also blasted the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — the bargaining group representing major studios that she had publicly hoped to reach a deal with a few weeks earlier.
“AMPTP’s responses to the union’s most important proposals have been insulting and disrespectful of our massive contributions to this industry,” Drescher said. “The companies have refused to meaningfully engage on some topics and on others completely stonewalled us. Until they do negotiate in good faith, we cannot begin to reach a deal.”
Representatives for the AMPTP could not immediately be reached for a response.
The actors’ demands largely mirror those of their counterparts with the Writers Guild of America, whose 11,000 members have been on strike for months. They want restrictions on artificial intelligence technology that can already simulate a performer’s likeness or a writer’s style, and a transformative new business model for the era of streaming, which the unions say is turning Hollywood’s creative process into a gig economy.
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Production on many shows and movies has already ground to a halt since the WGA went on strike at the beginning of May. A joint walkout by actors is expected to shut down nearly all remaining filming.
SAG-AFTRA and the studios tried for weeks to avoid a second strike, extending an original deadline of June 30 into this month, and making a last-minute request for help from the U.S. government’s Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which dispatched a senior mediator to participate in the final round of talks on Wednesday.
It was to no avail, and Hollywood is now bracing for nearly all on-air talent to walk off set. A-list actors such as Meryl Streep, Jamie Lee Curtis, Quinta Brunson and Pedro Pascal had previously declared their willingness to strike in an open letter to SAG-AFTRA’s leaders.
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A double strike with writers would be nearly unprecedented. While actors and writers have both walked off set several times — including the 2007 writers strike and a six-month performers strike in 2000 that was one of the longest entertainment strikes in history — they have only picketed simultaneously once: in 1960, when the Screen Actors Guild was led by Ronald Reagan.
That double walkout ended when studios agreed — among other transformative conditions — to pay actors a percentage of money earned when movies were licensed for TV.
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Source: The Washington Post
