End of the Hollywood strike: Actors and studios reach an agreement that concludes 118 days of labor stoppages

It’s over. Hollywood has put an end to the nightmare that has kept the industry on edge for 118 days. The U.S. actors’ strike that began in July is coming to an end. After 15 intense days of negotiations, the negotiating committee of SAG-AFTRA has reached a tentative agreement signed “unanimously,” as announced in a statement, explaining that the strike will end definitively on Thursday, November 9. The agreement will improve both the minimum wage of workers and the contributions to their pension funds. The so-called residual payments (those received by performers after the broadcast of their series and films on television, and now also on the streaming platforms) will be increased, and there will be new rules regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI), as reported exclusively by the Los Angeles Times. As already happened in the screenwriters’ strike, the 160,000 actors of the union will have to vote on the deal on Friday, after which the details of the agreement will be known. In the writers’ case, 99% of the union members approved the proposal.

Getting to this point has been a long and complex journey, but finally both sides have reached a satisfactory agreement. The beginning of the end of the deadlock began on Tuesday, October 24, a date marked in red in the diaries of the entire film industry when, after 103 days of the strike action, negotiations were resumed. Representatives of the actors’ union sat down for talks with the four heads of four major studios. Disney’s Bob Iger was the instigator of the conversation after calling the head of negotiations, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, on October 21 and inviting him to return to the table. Iger was joined by Ted Sarandos of Netflix, Donna Langley of Universal and David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Since then, a substantial improvement in the conditions offered by the large companies to the actors was already expected.

No conclusions were reached on that day, though. SAG-AFTRA committed to reconvene the following day but then decided to delay by a further 24 hours. As the union explained in a communiqué, they preferred to take the extra day to “review the proposal made by the studios” before resuming the negotiation. Thursday and Friday of that week produced very productive meetings, according to the few leaks that have reached the media. On October 28, The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and SAG-AFTRA held meetings again, this time telematically. There was no rest on Sunday, when SAG-AFTRA assured its members in a letter that on Monday both sides would continue to work, albeit separately. On November 1, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher posted a video on social networks speaking of “strength, not anger, optimism, not negativity,” adding she was “getting ready now to go to work.”

On the 2nd and 3rd of November, reports indicated that the end was imminent. And so it was announced on Saturday the 4th. The whole thing dragged on, especially on the issue of artificial intelligence, which kept the parties at the table all day Monday and Tuesday. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, just before five o’clock, the agreement was reached.

The specialized press has said that the intention of the big content creators is to save what’s left of the season, but especially to prevent the stoppages extending into the New Year. The awards season is about to begin, some of the biggest premieres of 2023 are underway or imminent, and the studios see it as essential that the actors are available to promote them. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon barely grossed $23 million on its opening weekend at the U.S. box office, despite being one of the biggest releases of the season. At its premiere at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood in mid-October, there was hardly any media as the movies stars, among them Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, were absent. The next installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, scheduled for 2024, has already been postponed to 2025, as has the remake of Snow White.

Actors have a collective bargaining agreement that is renewed every three years. The signing of the 2020 agreement, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, was a mere formality, so in the 2023 agreement the intention was to push for profound changes, such as salary improvements and a regulation on artificial intelligence. But the positions between SAG-AFTRA, which represents over 160,000 actors in the U.S., and the studios became so far removed that the union called a strike on July 13. It wasn’t until October 3 that the two parties decided to sit down again to discuss the issue.

There were meetings and negotiations but talks broke down 10 days later. According to SAG-AFTRA, the studios — grouped within the AMPTP — offered a financial proposal that was even lower than at the outset of the negotiations. “Our determination is unwavering,” the union said, while accusing the studios of using “bully tactics.” “We have sacrificed too much to capitulate to their stonewalling and greed,” said Drescher.

The union presented a plan to increase the minimum wage for actors, which implied an outlay of $800 million a year for the studios, at a rate of 57 cents per subscriber. However, the studios rejected the proposal. Last week, George Clooney, accompanied by other actors such as Meryl Streep and Emma Stone, tabled a proposal whereby A-listers would pay higher fees to raise some $50 million a year to help their colleagues. Although Drescher thanked them for the initiative, she pointed out that it would not be legal as contributions to salaries, health plans, and pensions can only be made by employers.

After more than 100 days of strike action, the public image of the actors’ union is beginning to take a hit, particularly after the backlash against prohibiting actors from dressing up on Halloween as the fictional characters of the platforms and companies they are demonstrating against. Little House on the Prairie actress Melissa Gilbert, who was SAG-AFTRA president between 2001 and 2005, harshly criticized that decision. “Do you really think this kind of infantile stuff is going to end the strike? We look like a joke,” she said on social media. “Please tell me you’re going to make this rule go away… and go negotiate!... This is the kind of silly bullsh*t that keeps us on strike.”

The strike has left immense losses, both labor and economic, in the film industry, in the State of California and in the whole country. The first actors’ strike since 1980 — back then it lasted 95 days; this time it was the first time actors and screenwriters protested at the same time since 1960 — has been tough from day one, and is estimated to leave losses of $4 billion, according to the most optimistic estimates, and as much as $7 billion in the worst ones.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition