Hollywood will be locked down when this Thursday the union of actors approves a strike. This step is taken for granted after the failure in the negotiations for the renewal of a collective agreement.
The president of the SAG-AFTRA union, Fran Drescher, has affirmed that “the responses to the most important proposals of the union have been insulting” by the Guild of Film and Television Producers.
In this way, the negotiation between actors and producers has been completely broken and the probable stoppage of 160,000 Hollywood interpreters will add to the writers strike, which began in May. The film and television sector will be forced to stop.
The actors union will hold a meeting this Thursday to formally approve the start of the strike. The last time actors went on strike against studios was in 1980 over the benefits of home videotape and pay-TV, and it lasted for three months. However, 63 years ago there was no simultaneous strike by actors and screenwriters. It was in 1960, and from that fight they obtained benefits such as access to health insurance and a pension.
The requests of the actors share similarities with those of the scriptwriters on issues such as the improvement of working conditions, the fair payment of residual rights by the streaming platforms and transparency in the process of calculating these amounts, as well as the regulation of the use of artificial intelligence (AI).