Hollywood actors are about to strike and join writers

LOS ANGELES –

Hollywood actors’ union negotiators unanimously recommended a strike after talks with studios fell through, allowing artists to get to work with writers as early as Thursday and disrupting numerous shows and movies.

The SAG-AFTRA union said the national board would vote on a strike order on Thursday morning. If approved, Hollywood studios would face their first double work stoppage in 63 years and be forced to halt productions in the United States.

Both SAG-AFTRA – Hollywood’s largest union with 160,000 members – and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are demanding base pay and residual pay increases in the streaming TV era, plus guarantees that their work will not be replaced by artificial intelligence ( AI).

Fran Drescher, former star of “The Nanny” and the president of SAG-AFTRA, said the studios’ responses to the actors’ concerns were “offensive and disrespectful.”

“The companies have refused to comment meaningfully on some topics and on others we have completely held back,” she said in a statement after a deadline for actors to agree on a new contract expired at midnight on Wednesday.

“Until they negotiate in good faith, we can’t start a deal,” she added.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which negotiates on behalf of Netflix Inc., Walt Disney Co. and other companies, said to be “deeply disappointed that SAG-AFTRA has decided to stop negotiations”.

The group said it had offered “historic pay and residual increases” and “a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses.” Actors fear that their digital images will be used without their permission or due compensation.

“Instead of continuing to negotiate, SAG-AFTRA has set us on a course that will exacerbate the financial hardship of thousands who depend on industry for their livelihoods,” the AMPTP said.

ECONOMIC DAMAGE

The strike by some 11,500 writers has resulted in late-night talk shows becoming endless reruns, disrupting most productions for the fall TV season, and halting work on big-budget movies.

A strike by SAG-AFTRA would halt the studios’ remaining productions in the US and put more pressure on media companies to find a solution.

Hollywood hasn’t had two strikes at once since 1960, when members of the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild both left their jobs in a fight over leftovers from movies sold to TV networks.

Today, unions are battling over base pay and streaming service scraps.

“You have to make $26,000 a year to qualify for health insurance and there are a lot of people who cross that threshold on their residual payments,” actor Matt Damon said Wednesday at a promotional event for the movie “Oppenheimer.”

“Money is being made and it needs to be allocated in a way that takes care of people who are on the margins,” added Damon.

However, many streaming services have yet to turn a profit after companies spend billions of dollars on programming to try and attract customers.

Disney, Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, and Paramount Global each lost hundreds of millions of dollars in streaming in the most recent quarter. At the same time, the rise of online video has eroded television advertising revenues by shrinking traditional TV audiences.

The WGA’s work stoppage is rippling throughout California and beyond, hitting caterers, prop suppliers and others who depend on Hollywood production for their business. Economic damage is expected to spread if actors also strike.

Broadcast networks have already announced fall schedules full of reality shows, unaffected by the current labor tensions. Independent productions not covered by union contracts can also continue.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; editing by Alison Williams, Toby Chopra and Andrew Heavens)