About 160,000 television and movie actors are going on strike at midnight, joining screenwriters who walked off the job in May and setting off Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in 63 years. The leaders of the union, SAG-AFTRA, approved a strike on Thursday, hours after contract talks with a group of studios broke down. Actors will be on the picket line on Friday.
Hollywood studios now face their first dual work stoppage in 63 years, forcing them to halt many productions across the US and abroad. The twin strikes will add to the economic damage from the writers walkout, delivering another blow to an industry struggling with changes to its business. Both SAG-AFTRA – Hollywood’s largest union – and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are demanding increases in base pay and residuals in the streaming TV era plus assurances that their work will not be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). The actors’ union announced at a Thursday press conference that the strike will begin at midnight. Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA’s president, called studio responses at the bargaining table “insulting and disrespectful.” “The companies have refused to meaningfully engage on some topics and on others completely stonewalled us.”
Actors and screenwriters have not been on strike at the same time since 1960, when Marilyn Monroe was still near her peak. Dual strikes would effectively bring the entertainment business to a halt, pitting more than 170,000 workers against old-line studios like Disney, Universal, Sony and Paramount, as well tech juggernauts like Netflix, Amazon and Apple. It will also hamper many overseas shoots, such as sequel to “Gladiator” in Morocco.
“We are disappointed that SAG-AFTRA has decided to walk away from negotiations,” the alliance of motion picture and television producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood firms, said. “This is the union’s choice, not ours.” Though Hollywood had been bracing for a writers’ strike since the beginning of the year – screenwriters have walked out eight times over the past seven decades, most recently in 2007 – the actors’ uncharacteristic resolve in recent weeks caught senior executives and producers off guard. The strikes are the latest blow to an entertainment industry that has been rocked in recent years by the pandemic.
Hollywood studios now face their first dual work stoppage in 63 years, forcing them to halt many productions across the US and abroad. The twin strikes will add to the economic damage from the writers walkout, delivering another blow to an industry struggling with changes to its business. Both SAG-AFTRA – Hollywood’s largest union – and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are demanding increases in base pay and residuals in the streaming TV era plus assurances that their work will not be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI). The actors’ union announced at a Thursday press conference that the strike will begin at midnight. Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA’s president, called studio responses at the bargaining table “insulting and disrespectful.” “The companies have refused to meaningfully engage on some topics and on others completely stonewalled us.”
Actors and screenwriters have not been on strike at the same time since 1960, when Marilyn Monroe was still near her peak. Dual strikes would effectively bring the entertainment business to a halt, pitting more than 170,000 workers against old-line studios like Disney, Universal, Sony and Paramount, as well tech juggernauts like Netflix, Amazon and Apple. It will also hamper many overseas shoots, such as sequel to “Gladiator” in Morocco.
“We are disappointed that SAG-AFTRA has decided to walk away from negotiations,” the alliance of motion picture and television producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood firms, said. “This is the union’s choice, not ours.” Though Hollywood had been bracing for a writers’ strike since the beginning of the year – screenwriters have walked out eight times over the past seven decades, most recently in 2007 – the actors’ uncharacteristic resolve in recent weeks caught senior executives and producers off guard. The strikes are the latest blow to an entertainment industry that has been rocked in recent years by the pandemic.