On Friday, July 14, the Screen Actors Guild announced that its more than 150,000 members would be going on strike. Hollywood practically came to a halt. That’s because, in addition to the actors, Hollywood writers were also on strike. The Writers Guild had been on strike since early May, and now two of Hollywood’s biggest unions were refusing to work with the studios.
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When the WGA strike ended on September 27, many were hopeful that a deal would soon be reached between SAG and the AMPTP — the Alliance of Motion Picture and Theater Producers. Sadly, that was not the case. SAG met with the AMPTP negotiating team — which included Disney CEO Bob Iger — a number of times, but things seemed to go from bad to worse.
But now, we have some exciting news to share! The SAG-AFTRA strike has come to an end!
On the evening of November 8, the Screen Actors Guild and the AMPTP announced that they had reached a tentative agreement to end the months-long strike.
According to Deadline Hollywood, the strike will end at 12:01 a.m. on November 9, after the 17-member SAG-AFTRA board unanimously voted to tentatively approve the new agreement.
The tentative agreement follows the studios responding on November 3 to the guild’s last comprehensive counter with a self-described “historic” package. That was succeeded less than 24 hours later by an expanded group of studio leaders — including execs from Paramount, Amazon, Apple and more — joining the Gang of Four to brief SAG-AFTRA on the AMPTP’s new offer, which was said to include big gains in wages and bonuses as well as sweeping AI protections.
At this time, we do not have any details of the new contracts that SAG has approved. But we do know many of the major concerns that SAG-AFTRA wanted to be addressed in their new contracts.
At the top of the list were things that focused on streaming and artificial intelligence.
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Studios have been notoriously quiet when it comes to their actual streaming numbers. Disney is not exempt from that. Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek was even called out for allegedly being deceptive about how many subscribers Disney+ actually had. For each person who lived in the household, Disney counted them as separate subscribers, even though they all shared one account.
SAG — as well as the WGA — wanted studios to be more transparent about actual streaming numbers. More transparency will also be vital when it comes to how much the actors are paid in residuals. Residuals are paychecks that actors will get when their projects are re-aired (like in syndication) or streamed on a service like Disney+.
During the strike, actors were sharing their stories about receiving residual paychecks for as low as zero dollars.
Artificial intelligence was another major point of division between the studios and SAG. The actors wanted protections against their voices and likenesses being created and used by artificial intelligence without the actors receiving proper compensation. Marvel star Scarlet Johansson is even suing a company for using her voice and likeness without her permission.
The only step left to bring the strike to an official end is for SAG-AFTRA members to vote on the new contract offer.
