After 118 days on strike, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), representing actors in Hollywood, reached a tentative agreement with major production companies such as Netflix, Disney, and Warner Brothers on December 8th. This comes a little over a month after the Writers Guild of America (WGA) ended its strike in September. With both actors and writers returning to work, Hollywood’s production system is expected to soon return to normal.
According to Bloomberg and other sources, SAG-AFTRA announced in a statement released on the same day, “We have approved a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that ends our 118-day strike as of 12:01 a.m. on December 9th.”
While the actors’ union has ended the strike for now, the union’s board of directors will review the agreement on December 10th, and the union’s approximately 160,000 members must also ratify it before it is finalized.
The details of the tentative agreement have not been released yet. However, it is reported to include an increase in the minimum wage for actors, an increase in residuals from streaming platforms, and increased health and pension insurance contributions. It is also reported to establish new rules regarding using artificial intelligence (AI) that actors had requested.
Foreign media predict that this agreement will increase production companies’ costs. Bloomberg reported the contract as having a value of “over $1 billion,” while The New York Times (NYT) quoted an analyst predicting, “Production costs will increase by 10% due to labor costs, which will likely lead to a reduction in the number of productions to offset these costs.”
As a result, the NYT reported that Hulu, the streaming service of NBCUniversal, is expected to produce only two-thirds of the number of programs next year compared to this year.
The actors’ union had gone on strike against the AMPTP, which represents major Hollywood corporations, since July 14th. Together with the WGA, which had started its strike in May, Hollywood faced an unprecedented crisis with the first simultaneous strike by actors and writers in 63 years since 1960.
The actors expressed dissatisfaction that they were not properly receiving residual royalties paid to writers and actors every time a work was viewed on a streaming platform. They also requested preventative measures against the unauthorized use of their images and voices in AI-generated images.
At the end of September, the writers’ union ended its strike after agreeing with the AMPTP following protracted negotiations. However, the actors’ union faced difficulties in the final negotiations over residuals from streaming and the issue of AI. As the strike dragged on, both sides faced difficulties, leading to active negotiations last week and finally reaching a tentative agreement.
The actors’ strike is believed to have had a significant economic impact, with the release and production schedules of Hollywood blockbuster movies being postponed one after another. An analyst from the Milken Institute, an economic research organization, estimated that the strike caused a loss of up to $6 billion in California alone.
By. Jeong Hyun Jin
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