Hollywood on brink of shutdown for first time in six decades

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Hollywood is on the brink of the first industry-wide shutdown in more than six decades after the actors’ union said talks had broken down with the major studios and that the 160,000 performers it represents could be set to join writers on strike as early as Thursday.

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing television and film actors in Hollywood, said in a statement at 1am Los Angeles time that its negotiating board had voted unanimously to recommend strike action after the midnight deadline for contract negotiations elapsed.

The prospect of strike action follows a month of tense negotiations between Hollywood’s biggest union and major studio and streaming services over issues including actors’ remuneration for AI “digital doubles”. The expiry date of the previous three-year contract had been extended to July 12 to allow talks to continue.

But early on Thursday morning, Fran Descher, SAG-AFTRA’s president, and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator, said the movie studios remained “unwilling to offer a fair deal on the key issues”, adding that their responses to proposals “have not been adequate”.

The union’s national board is set to hold a final vote later on Thursday morning on strike action and pickets could then begin shortly afterwards. The 11,500-member Writers Guild of America has been on strike since early May.

If industrial action goes ahead, Hollywood will face a strike by both actors and writers for the first time since 1960, when they walked out over how much TV networks paid for films. At the time, Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors’ Guild, a predecessor to SAG-AFTRA.

“Despite our team’s dedication to advocating on your behalf, the [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group representing studios and streamers] has refused to acknowledge that enormous shifts in the industry and economy have had a detrimental impact on those who perform labour for the studios,” the pair said. The last major actors’ strike took place in 1980.

Negotiations between movie studios and the actors’ union have centred on the same flashpoints as those that led writers to walk out. Rules around compensation for films sold to streaming services and contractual guarantees about the use of artificial intelligence in films and TV have proved particularly contentious.

“We are deeply disappointed that SAG-AFTRA has decided to walk away from negotiations. This is the union’s choice, not ours,” the AMPTP said. “In doing so, it has dismissed our offer of historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods, a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses, and more.”

Last month, more than 300 leading Hollywood stars, including Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, wrote to SAG-AFTRA leadership supporting possible strike action.

“We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and the power of our union have all been undermined in the last decade. We need to reverse those trajectories,” they wrote in an open letter.

About 98 per cent of voting SAG-AFTRA members supported possible strike action when a ballot of more than 60,000 performers was held last month.