A double strike could throw Hollywood into total disarray.
The last time a double strike took place in Hollywood, gas cost 31 cents per gallon and Dwight Eisenhower was our president. Now, history is repeating itself, with the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) already on strike, and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) now hitting the picket lines too.
As CNN reports, SAG-AFTRA, which represents about 160,000 actors, had readied itself for a strike from July 1, before a last-minute contract extension was negotiated. Their contract expired at 11:59 pm PDT Wednesday. Eleventh-hour negotiations don’t appear to have resulted in a deal, so Hollywood has hit (another) standstill after SAG-AFTRA took a vote on whether to strike on July 13.
Here’s a breakdown of why the actors’ union has taken drastic action, as well as an update on how the WGA is faring two months into its own strike.
What is the disagreement causing the strike between the actors’ guild and the film and television studios?
SAG-AFTRA’s demands to the Hollywood studios are twofold. First, the union wants higher compensation standards in the streaming era. Second, they want protection from the use of artificial intelligence in certain situations — specifically, actors are looking for guarantees that their likenesses will not be generated via A.I. without their consent.
The Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP) is negotiating on behalf of studios and major streaming services, including Amazon, Disney, NBC Universal, Paramount Global, Apple, Sony, CBS, Netflix, and Warner Bros. SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said in a statement published July 13 that the studio management’s offers were “insulting and disrespectful.”
These financial and A.I.-related requests are virtually identical to the requests made by the WGA earlier this year — and now, Variety reports, the WGA is on standby to assist the SAG-AFTRA in executing on an industry-wide work stoppage. In fact, a SAG-AFTRA strike could work as a big boost of momentum for the WGA strike, which has been ongoing since May 2, and seems poised to last for a while. The studios and WGA haven’t held talks since the day the strike began.
It also doesn’t hurt SAG-AFTRA’s case that some serious heavy-hitters in the acting universe are prepared to strike with the union, including Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep. In a letter signed by more than 300 actors (including those two), the A-listers threw their full weight behind the union, arguing that these contract requests are much-needed and long overdue.
The letter, which was obtained by news outlets, read in part, “This is an unprecedented inflection point in our industry, and what might be considered a good deal in any other years is simply not enough. 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.”
Along with Lawrence and Streep, the other superstars who signed the letter include Ben Stiller, Amy Schumer, Quinta Brunson, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, to name a few. ”[We] would rather go on strike than compromise on these fundamental points,” the memo said.
What about the WGA strike?
It’s now been more than two months since the WGA went on strike — and if you’re holding out hope that your favorite shows will resume production ASAP, you might be disappointed.
Per Deadline, a number of studio executives have confirmed that they have no intention of meeting with the writers’ union any time soon. In fact, one executive explicitly told the publication that “the endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” calling the strategy “a cruel but necessary evil.”
Per another executive, the goal is to extend the strike for long enough that members of the WGA go to union leadership and demand they try to restart talks. If that were to happen, then the studios would have the upper hand in dictating the terms of those talks.
The WGA has not yet responded to the comments made in the Deadline article, but it did release a statement of solidarity with the SAG-AFTRA, which suggests it has no intentions of buckling to the studios any time soon.
In a joint letter, the two unions said, “Together, our solidarity is not to be underestimated. The Hollywood Unions and Guilds stand more united than ever.”
