Actors are nearing 100 days on strike
LOS ANGELES — While screenwriters are busy back at work, film and TV actors remain on picket lines, with the longest strike in their history set to hit 100 days Saturday after talks broke off with studios. Here’s a look at where things stand, how their stretched-out standoff compares with past strikes and what happens next.
Too far apart
Hopes were high and leaders of the Screen Actors Guild-american Federation of Television and Radio Artists were cautiously optimistic when they resumed negotiations Oct. 2 for the first time since the strike began 2 1/2 months earlier.
The same group of CEOS from the biggest studios had made a major deal just over a week earlier with striking writers, whose leaders celebrated their gains on many issues actors also are fighting for: long-term pay, consistency of employment and control over the use of artificial intelligence.
But the actors’ talks were tepid, with days off between sessions and no reports of progress. Then studios abruptly ended them Oct. 11, saying the actors’ demands were exorbitantly expensive and that the two sides were too far apart to continue. “We only met with them a couple of times, Monday, half a day Wednesday, half a day Friday. That was what they were available for,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said soon after the talks broke off. “Then this past week, it was Monday and a half a day on Wednesday. And then ‘Bye bye.’ I’ve never really met people that actually don’t understand what negotiations mean. Why are you walking away from the table?”
The reasons, according to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, included a union demand for a fee for each subscriber to streaming services. “SAG-AFTRA gave the member companies an ultimatum: Either agree to a proposal for a tax on subscribers as well as all other open items, or else the strike would continue,” the AMPTP said in a statement. “The member companies responded to SAG-AFTRA’S ultimatum that, unfortunately, the tax on subscribers poses an untenable economic burden.”
Netflix CO-CEO Ted Sarandos, one of the executives in on the bargaining sessions, told investors on an earnings call Wednesday that “this really broke our momentum unfortunately.” SAG-AFTRA leaders said it was ridiculous to frame this demand as though it were a tax on customers and that it was the executives themselves who wanted to shift from a model based on a show’s popularity to one based on number of subscribers.
What happens next?
The actors are in unscripted territory, with no end in sight. Their union never has been on a strike this long, nor been on strike at all since before many of its members were born. Not even its veteran leaders have found themselves in quite these circumstances.
As they did for months before the talks broke off, members and leaders will rally, picket and speak out publicly until the studios signal a willingness to talk again. No one knows how long that will take. SAGAFTRA says it is willing to resume at any time, but that won’t change its demands.
“I think that they think that we’re going to cower,” Drescher said. “But that’s never going to happen because this is a crossroads and we must stay on course.”
Movies and TV shows
The return of writers has gotten the Hollywood production machine churning again, with rooms full of scribes penning new seasons of shows that had been suspended and film writers finishing scripts. But the finished product will await the end of the actors strike, and production will remain suspended for many TV shows and dozens of films, including “Wicked,” “Deadpool 3” and “Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 2.”
The Emmys, whose nominations were announced the same day the actors strike was called, opted to wait for the stars and move the ceremony from September to January, though that date could be threatened, too.
The Oscars are a long way off in March, but the campaigns to win them are usually well underway by now. With some exceptions — nonstudio productions approved by the union — performers are prohibited from promoting their films at press junkets or on red carpets.