Focus turns to actors after writers agree to deal
Hollywood’s actors are back in the spotlight.
With screenwriters reaching a tentative agreement with the major entertainment studios on a new labor deal on Sunday night, one big obstacle stands in the way of the film and TV industry roaring back to life: ending the strike with tens of thousands of actors.
The two sides have not spoken in more than two months, and no talks are scheduled.
Leaders of SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, have indicated a willingness to negotiate, but the studios made a strategic decision in early August to focus on reaching a detente with the writers first. A big reason was the rhetoric of Fran Drescher, the president of the actors union, who made one fiery speech after the next early in the strike, including one in which she denounced studio executives as “land barons of a medieval time.”
“Eventually, the people break down the gates of Versailles,” Ms. Drescher said after the actors strike was called in July. “And then it’s over. We’re at that moment right now.”
Ms. Drescher has been less vocal in recent weeks, however. Only a resolution with the actors will determine when tens of thousands of workers — including camera operators, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers — return to work.
The actors union offered congratulations to the Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters, in a statement Sunday night, adding that it was eager to review the tentative agreement with the studios. Still, it said that it remained “committed to achieving the necessary terms for our members.”
It has been 74 days since the actors union and representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television
Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, have talked. That will probably soon change given the high stakes of salvaging the 2024 theatrical box office, which will be in considerable jeopardy should Hollywood not be able to restart production within the next month. Neither SAG-AFTRA nor the studio alliance immediately responded to requests for comment on Monday.
“There’s tremendous pressure on both sides to get this done,” said Bobby Schwartz, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and a longtime entertainment lawyer who has represented several of the major studios. “The deal that the Writers Guild and the studios struck economically could have been worked out in May, June. It didn’t need to go this long. I think the membership of SAG-AFTRA is going to say we’ve been out of work for months, we want to go back to work, we don’t want to be the ones that are keeping everybody else on the sidelines.”