Hollywood on strike: What do actors want?
Hollywood actors have joined screenwriters in the first dual strike in decades. Dr. Pirooz Kalayeh is an assistant professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, as well as a filmmaker. He joined LiveNOW from FOX’s Josh Breslow to discuss the strike.
The three-year contract agreement must be approved by votes from the union’s board and its members in the coming days, but the leadership declared that the strike will end at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday.
More than 60,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Performers went on strike July 14, joining screenwriters who had walked off the job more than two months earlier. It was the first time the two unions had been on strike together since 1960. Studios chose to negotiate with the writers first, striking a deal that their leadership marked as a major win and bringing their strike to an end on Sept. 26.
Executives from top entertainment companies including Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and Universal had a direct hand in negotiations, which like all Hollywood union talks were led by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Actors should quickly return to movie sets where productions were paused, including “Deadpool 3,” “Gladiator 2” and “Wicked.” Other movies and shows will restart shooting once returning writers finish scripts.
And beyond scripted productions, the end of the strike allows actors to return to red carpets, talk shows and podcasts, as Hollywood’s awards season approaches.
The only major awards show directly effected by the strike was the Emmys, which was moved from September to January. Now, the usual fall Oscar campaigns will mobilize.
Union leaders treated the strike like a watershed moment from the start, coming as it did amid wider labor fights in other industries.
“I think it’s a conversation now about the culture of big business, and how it treats everybody up and down the ladder in the name of profit,” SAG-AFTRA President and “The Nanny” star Fran Drescher told The Associated Press in an August interview.
The agreement also means a return to sets for thousands of film crew members who have left with nothing to work on during the strikes. SAG-AFTRA sought to offset their hardship by allowing sometimes controversial interim agreements for some smaller productions to proceed, and by making their strike relief fund available to all workers in the industry.
