- The Hollywood strike is over
- SAG-AFTRA has reached a deal with studios
- THESE are the details of the agreement
It's over. The deal is reached and this means that Hollywood could be back in action within weeks, much to the relief of fans worldwide! The strike officially ended at 12:01 a.m. PT on Thursday, November 9. This marked the end of a tumultuous seven-month period of labor unrest that saw both the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA hit the picket lines in the industry's first joint strike in over 60 years.
The deal is historic
While the specific details of the deal remain under wraps, it's expected to be revealed when the agreement goes to the SAG-AFTRA board on Friday. The deal comes less than a month after Writers Guild members ratified their own agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The negotiations saw high-profile participation from Netflix's Ted Sarandos, Disney's Bob Iger, NBCUniversal's Donna Langley, and Warner Bros Discovery's David Zaslav. The tentative agreement was reached after the studios responded to the guild's last comprehensive counter with a self-described "historic" package.
The agreement is a significant step towards restoring normalcy in Hollywood. If all goes as planned and the board signs off on the tentative deal, eligible members of the 160,000-strong actors guild will vote to ratify the new agreement. This could mean that people could be back to work soon and production restarted quickly.
What a wait it has been! The six-month-long Hollywood strikes are estimated to have cost the Southern California economy more than $6.5 billion and 45,000 entertainment industry jobs. The labor action garnered passionate unity among guild members, but it also caused financial hardship for many.
What now?
The tentative agreement signals the end of a long and challenging journey filled with diversions and potholes. But with this new deal, Hollywood is set to reclaim its position as the world's entertainment capital. Many wonder what this means for Hollywood going forward! SAG-AFTRA’s strike, coming as it did amid an ongoing writers strike in July, gave the union an unusual amount of leverage early on in its talks. Almost immediately, most remaining unionized U.S. productions that were operating without writers shut down, including 'Deadpool 3' and 'Venom 3'.
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An end in sight?
The end is here!
The show must go on
As the months of the work stoppage stretched on pressure started to build as the strike neared and surpassed its 100-day mark. A-list actors began talking to both their union and the studios in an attempt to improve progress in the negotiations.
A number of actors also started drafting a letter expressing concerns about the union’s leadership but held back from publishing it, fearful of the missive’s potential impact on negotiations. Then, on Oct. 26, a separate letter was released, signed by apparently thousands of actors, exhorting negotiators, "We have not come all this way to cave now."
The amount of time that the union spent on strike in 2023 will certainly raise expectations for the deal they reached with studios. In the union’s upcoming ratification vote, the date of which has not yet been announced, members will decide whether the pact is acceptable to them.
Going forward, actors will have a lot more power to dictate terms. Let's wait and see if that is a good thing for the industry.
