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    Actors to Start Voting on Contract on Tuesday

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    The SAG-AFTRA board voted on Friday to send the tentative deal with studios to its members for a ratification process that will end in early December.The union that represents movie and television actors said on Friday that its national board had voted with 86 percent support to send a tentative contract with studios to members for ratification.The ratification process will start on Tuesday and end the first week in December. Actors can go back to work immediately, however.Members are expected to approve the contract, which Fran Drescher, the union’s outspoken president, valued at more than $1 billion over three years. She highlighted the “extraordinary scope” of the agreement, noting that it included protections around the use of artificial intelligence, higher minimum pay, better health care funding, concessions from studios on self-taped auditions, improved hair and makeup services on sets, and a requirement for intimacy coordinators for sex scenes, among other gains.“They had to yield,” Ms. Drescher said at a news conference during a nearly 30-minute monologue that touched on Veterans Day, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula costume, her parents, the Roman Empire, the stubbornness of studios, Buddhism, Frederick Douglass and her dog.The union, SAG-AFTRA, which represents tens of thousands of actors, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios, reached the tentative agreement on Wednesday. It followed a bitter standoff that contributed to a near-complete shutdown of production in the entertainment industry. At 118 days, it was the longest movie and television strike in the union’s 90-year history.The tentative deal was also historic, according to the studio alliance, which said it reflected “the biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union.” The actors’ strike, combined with a writers’ strike that started in May and was resolved in September, devastated the entertainment economy. Hundreds of thousands of crew members were idled, with some losing their homes and turning to food banks for groceries. Some small businesses that service studios — costume dry cleaners, prop warehouses, catering companies — may never recover.The dual strikes caused roughly $10 billion in losses nationwide, according to Todd Holmes, an associate professor of entertainment media management at California State University, Northridge. While the big studios are based in Los Angeles, they also use soundstage complexes in Georgia, New York, New Jersey and New Mexico.Kevin Klowden, chief global strategist with the Milken Institute, an economic think tank, was more cautious with his estimate, putting losses at more than $6 billion. He said it “may take a while” to know the true size.On Friday, the SAG-AFTRA board, which includes Sharon Stone, Sean Astin and Rosie O’Donnell, made public a summary of the tentative contract’s contents. While not receiving everything it asked for, the union achieved significant gains.The final sticking point involved “synthetic fakes,” or the use of artificial intelligence to create an entirely fabricated character by melding together recognizable features from real actors. The union won consent and compensation guarantees.“You could imagine prompting a generative A.I. system that’s been trained on a bunch of actors’ performances to create a digital performer, for example, who has Julia Roberts’s smile,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s executive director, said in an interview. “Before this agreement, there wasn’t any contractual or legal basis to require consent or prohibit that. Now there will be.”But this strike was never about stars. A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence and Brad Pitt negotiate their own contracts (or, more precisely, their agents do). The tentative contract covers minimums, or what actors who don’t have any clout get paid.SAG-AFTRA had demanded an 11 percent raise for minimum pay in the first year of a contract. Studios had insisted that they could offer no more than 5 percent, the same as had recently been given (and agreed to) by unions for writers and directors. In the end, the union was able to win a 7 percent first-year raise.“This is really important because it sends a very clear signal to other unions,” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said. “I’m not aware of anyone ever being able to break the pattern before, because it’s always been that the A.M.P.T.P. establishes a number and everyone gets held to it.”SAG-AFTRA failed in one regard. It had gone into negotiations demanding a percentage of streaming service revenue. It had proposed a 2 percent share — later dropped to 1 percent, before a pivot to a per-subscriber fee. Ms. Drescher had made the demand a priority, but companies like Netflix balked, calling it “a bridge too far.”Instead, the studio alliance proposed a new residual (a type of royalty) for streaming programs based on performance metrics, which the union, after making some adjustments, agreed to take. It is similar to what the Writers Guild of America achieved in its negotiations: Actors in streaming shows that attract at least 20 percent of subscribers will receive a bonus.Unlike the Writers Guild, however, SAG-AFTRA also got the studio alliance to agree to a system in which 25 percent of the bonus money will go into a fund that will be distributed to actors in less successful streaming shows.“I felt like, is this a win or a loss?” Ms. Drescher said. “But we’re getting the money. We opened a new revenue stream. What matters is that we got into another pocket.” More

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      SAG-AFTRA Advises Actors Against Character Costumes Amid Strike

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      The SAG-AFTRA union told its members not to dress as characters from major productions and post pictures, which could be seen as promoting the work of companies they are negotiating with.Barbie, Ken and Wednesday Addams costumes are out. Ghosts and zombies are in.Halloween this year is tricky for actors on strike, under new union guidelines that tell them how to avoid crossing the virtual picket line: Don’t dress as characters from major studio productions or post photographs of the costumes online.“Let’s use our collective power to send a loud and clear message to our struck employers that we will not promote their content without a fair contract,” the union, SAG-AFTRA, said in the guidelines on Thursday.The union urged its members to “celebrate Halloween this year while also staying in solidarity.”SAG-AFTRA, representing more than 150,000 television and movie actors, has been on strike since July while it negotiates a contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major movie and streaming companies including Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros.Generally, the union encourages striking members to share photographs of their union engagement and the picket line in order to amplify their demands, which include increased residual payments from streaming services, a wage boost and protections regarding the use of artificial intelligence. But SAG-AFTRA said its Halloween guidelines were intended “to make sure our members don’t inadvertently break strike rules.”The guidelines urge members to choose generic costumes — of zombies, spiders or ghosts, say — or to base their costumes on characters from animated television shows.In its coverage of the new guidelines on Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter highlighted some of the rules’ technicalities. For example, a costume based on Barbie, which is owned by Mattel, could suggest that the wearer was promoting the summer’s biggest movie from a major studio.“Presumably, actors could dress up like struck characters if they weren’t seen publicly in their costumes, but it’s probably best not to risk it — after all, nothing is scarier than getting called out for scabbing,” the publication wrote, using the slang term for someone who disregards a strike.Social media photos of costumes inspired by content covered by the strike could be considered publicity work, according to the union. It was not clear how actors would handle dressing up as Barbie or J. Robert Oppenheimer at events that would not be publicized or whether actors would influence the costume choices of their family members.“I look forward to screaming ‘scab’ at my 8 year old all night. She’s not in the union but she needs to learn,” the actor Ryan Reynolds said in a joking post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.John Rocha, a union actor and the co-host of “The Hot Mic,” a film review podcast, called the decision “foolish” and said he hoped that SAG-AFTRA would reverse course.“Partying at Halloween dressed as the characters their fellow SAG actors brought to life (while they blow off some steam) should be ENCOURAGED,” he said on X.Negotiations between the entertainment studios and the union collapsed last week, with both sides saying they remained far apart on the most significant issues. More

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      SAG-AFTRA Negotiator a Key Player as Talks Set to Resume in Actors Strike

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      Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the lead negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, will be a key player as the guild begins talks with the studios again on Monday.Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the executive director and chief negotiator for the actors’ union, has spent the past two decades toiling behind the scenes during contract talks. The spotlight, he knows, is for the SAG-AFTRA president, usually a well-known performer like the current office holder, Fran Drescher.But ever since the guild went on strike on July 14 for the first time in 40 years, things have been different.In the past three months, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland, 51, has stepped out from behind the negotiating table and made fiery speeches, walked film festival red carpets and reached out to the union’s younger members via Instagram reels. His more frequent appearances have given people ample opportunity to see the tattoos on his forearms, a visual clue to how much the professional and the personal are intertwined for him. On the right are five symbols — a record, a play button, a film reel, a megaphone and a radio antenna — representing the contracts he’s negotiated for union members in the music, film/TV, radio, commercial, video and broadcast industries. On his left arm is a coil with five loops that represent the five children he has adopted with his husband, John.“It’s not just a job for me,” he said in an interview. “This is where I’ve spent the vast majority of my professional career, and I really care about what happens to our members.”Now, however, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland is facing his most challenging public moment. Come Monday, when the union returns to the negotiating table with the studios in an attempt to resolve the strike that has much of Hollywood at a standstill, all eyes will be on him.(Ted Sarandos, a co-chairman of Netflix; David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery; Donna Langley, the chief content officer of Universal Pictures; and Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, will also be in attendance, along with the chief negotiator for the studios, Carol Lombardini.)When the Writers Guild of America agreed to a tentative deal for its 11,500 members last Sunday, that left SAG-AFTRA as the lone union holding out for a new deal. How this week’s negotiations go will therefore affect not just the tens of thousands of people in Mr. Crabtree-Ireland’s guild, but everyone in the entertainment industry.The dual strikes have been devastating financially, with more than 100,000 behind-the-scenes workers like location scouts, makeup artists and lighting technicians out of work. The California economy has lost an estimated $5 billion. Major studios like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global have seen their stock prices drop. Analysts have estimated that the global box office will lose as much as $1.6 billion in ticket sales because of movies whose releases were pushed back to next year.“I’m 100 percent sure that he’s a deal maker, a realist and that he understands the horse trade,” Bryan Lourd, chief executive of Creative Artists Agency, said of Mr. Crabtree-Ireland. “He has the list of what he’s got to get and what he can lose.”Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said that he was encouraged by the tentative deal reached by the writers and that he was anxious to get a deal done for the actors. But he added that he did not feel pressure because the actors were the only ones on strike. The push he feels, he said, was “because of the economic impact and the impact on our members and others.”The negotiations on Monday will be the first time that the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, have talked since the actors went on strike. At the time SAG-AFTRA walked out, the dialogue between the sides had reached a boiling point.Mr. Iger, of Disney, elicited the ire of many writers and actors by saying that those on strike were not being “realistic” in their demands. Ms. Drescher responded by saying Disney should put Mr. Iger “behind doors and never let him talk to anybody” and compared him and the other studio chiefs to “land barons of a medieval time.”Mr. Crabtree-Ireland was traditionally seen as a voice of reason by several studio executives, but at a news conference on July 13 announcing the strike, he appeared beside Ms. Drescher and spoke passionately about the studios’ intentions to replace background actors with artificial intelligence technology in perpetuity.The studios issued a statement, arguing that A.I. agreements could only be made for a specific project — but by then, A.I. had become a rallying cry for striking actors. The actors, like the writers, have also said that the streaming era has worsened their compensation and overall working conditions.Mr. Crabtree-Ireland played down the volatile nature of the rhetoric in the interview, and said Ms. Drescher’s comments about Mr. Iger were just a response to a statement that had angered “a very wide swath of our members.”“She was elected by the members to do this job,” he added. “So I feel very confident walking into a room with Fran and the rest of our negotiating team who have had extraordinary unity throughout this entire process.”The studio alliance declined to comment for this article.While the writers’ deal would seem to give the actors and studios a blueprint for their negotiations, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland pointed out that SAG-AFTRA has different asks. For instance, he noted the new level of transparency reached between writers and the streaming companies regarding residual payments was “huge.” But the actors are looking to secure a revenue-sharing deal with the studios, a proposal the alliance has deemed a non-starter.“We really feel that the companies need to share a share of the revenue that’s coming from streaming,” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said. “And we are not presently considering an approach that doesn’t attach in that way.”Mr. Crabtree-Ireland joined SAG-AFTRA in 2000, a Georgetown graduate with a law degree from the University of California, Davis, who spent the first two years of his career in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.He rose quickly at the union, first to general counsel, then adding chief operating officer to his title. In 2021, he was named national executive director and chief negotiator, a job that pays $989,700 annually.Outside of the office, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland raises his children ranging in age from 4 to 18 with his husband. The two were first married in 2004, one of the first 100 same-sex couples to wed in San Francisco before the California Supreme Court annulled the unions.While well-liked by both his colleagues and his adversaries, his performance during the strike has earned some critiques from his own membership. Despite the loyalty exhibited on the picket lines, many who have dealt with the union behind the scenes describe a messy, disorganized approach — specifically when it comes to the rules about what its members can and can’t do during the strike.One point of contention was the issue of interim agreements, which essentially allowed actors to work on and publicize projects that were not backed by the studios the union was striking against.The rules were fuzzy, however, and many actors were confused about what was permissible. The comedic actress Sarah Silverman blasted SAG-AFTRA on her Instagram account, and Viola Davis declined to begin production on a film granted an interim agreement. Soon, publicists began hounding the union to clarify whether actors could promote independent films without worrying that they were crossing the picket line.On Aug. 24, less than a week before the start of the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland issued a statement that read in part, “Whether it’s walking a picket line, working on approved Interim Agreement productions, or maintaining employment on one of our other permissible, non-struck contracts, our members’ support for their union is empowering and inspiring.”Mr. Crabtree-Ireland also talked to many actors who had concerns.“I underestimated how quickly our members were going to need that information,” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said. “That is one of the few things that I would do differently.”It was a pragmatic response, in keeping with the reputation Mr. Crabtree-Ireland has built throughout his career. And many in the entertainment industry are hoping that same style will be a key in the negotiations that could get Hollywood back to business.“It’s tricky to navigate because he’s trying to please his members and fight for their issues and a lot of them have different issues,” said Lindsay Dougherty, lead organizer for Teamsters Local 399, the union that represents Hollywood workers like truck drivers, casting directors and animal trainers. “It’s obviously not all on him, but I’m sure he feels the pressure.”Brooks Barnes More

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      Hollywood Turns to Actors’ Strike After Writers Agree to Deal

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      The studios and the actors’ union haven’t spoken for more than two months, but a deal is needed before the entertainment industry can fully return.Hollywood’s actors are back in the spotlight.With screenwriters reaching a tentative agreement with the major entertainment studios on a new labor deal on Sunday night, one big obstacle stands in the way of the film and TV industry roaring back to life: ending the strike with tens of thousands of actors.The two sides have not spoken in more than two months, and no talks are scheduled.Leaders of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, have indicated a willingness to negotiate, but the studios made a strategic decision in early August to focus on reaching a détente with the writers first. A big reason was the rhetoric of Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, who made one fiery speech after another following the strike, including one in which she denounced studio executives as “land barons of a medieval time.”“Eventually, the people break down the gates of Versailles,” Ms. Drescher said after the actors’ strike was called in July. “And then it’s over. We’re at that moment right now.”Ms. Drescher has been less vocal in recent weeks, however. Only a resolution with the actors will determine when tens of thousands of workers — including camera operators, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers — return to work.The actors’ union offered congratulations to the Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters, in a statement on Sunday night, adding that it was eager to review the tentative agreement with the studios. Still, it said it remained “committed to achieving the necessary terms for our members.”With a tentative deal in hand, the Writers Guild suspended picketing. But protests by actors will begin again on Tuesday, after a break for Yom Kippur on Monday. “We need everyone on the line Tuesday-Friday,” the actress Frances Fisher, a member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee, said on Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Show us your #Solidarity!”Dozens of Writers Guild members vowed to support the actors. “I know there’s a huge sign of relief reverberating through the town right now, but it’s not over for any of us until SAG-AFTRA gets their deal,” Amy Berg, a Writers Guild strike captain, wrote on X.Their support will go only so far, however. Writers Guild negotiators were unsuccessful in receiving the contractual right to honor other unions’ picket lines; writers will be required to return to work, perhaps before a ratification vote is final.It has been 74 days since the actors’ union and representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, have talked. That will probably soon change given the high stakes of salvaging the 2024 theatrical box office, which will be in considerable jeopardy should Hollywood not be able to restart production within the next month. The TV production window for the remainder of the year is also closing, given the coming holidays.Restarting talks with the actors’ union is a bit more complicated than it sounds. For a start, SAG-AFTRA officials will need time to scrutinize the deal points achieved by the Writers Guild; those wins and compromises will inform a new bargaining strategy for the actors. Also, talks between studios and writers restarted only after leaders on both sides spent time back-channeling about the thorniest issues and seeing if there was a willingness to negotiate. Studios are likely to try the same strategy with the actors.The soonest that negotiations between actors and the studios could restart is next week, according to a person directly involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the strike.Neither SAG-AFTRA nor the studio alliance commented on Monday.“There’s tremendous pressure on both sides to get this done,” said Bobby Schwartz, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and a longtime entertainment lawyer who has represented several of the major studios. “The deal that the Writers Guild and the studios struck economically could have been worked out in May, June. It didn’t need to go this long. I think the membership of SAG-AFTRA is going to say we’ve been out of work for months, we want to go back to work, we don’t want to be the ones that are keeping everybody else on the sidelines.”The dual strikes by the writers and the actors — the first time that has happened since 1960 — have effectively shut down TV and film production for months. The fallout has been significant, both inside and outside the industry. California’s economy alone has lost more than $5 billion, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.Warner Bros. Discovery said this month that the impact from the labor disputes would reduce its adjusted earnings for the year by $300 million to $500 million. Additionally, share prices for other major media companies like Disney and Paramount have taken a hit in recent months.The industry took a meaningful step toward stabilization on Sunday night, though, with the tentative deal between the writers and studios all but ending a 146-day strike.The deal still needs to be approved by union leadership and ratified by rank-and-file screenwriters. “I’m waiting impatiently to see what the exact language is around A.I.,” said Joseph Vinciguerra, a Writers Guild member and a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.The approval vote by union leadership is expected on Tuesday.Though the fine print of the terms has not been released, the agreement has much of what the writers had demanded, including increases in compensation for streaming content, concessions from studios on minimum staffing for television shows and guarantees that artificial intelligence technology will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation.“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members.On Monday, President Biden released a statement applauding the deal, saying it would “allow writers to return to the important work of telling the stories of our nation, our world — and of all of us.”The prospective writers’ deal should provide a blueprint for the actors, since many of their demands are similar.Union leaders for the actors said their compensation levels, as well as their working conditions, were worsened by the rise of streaming. Like screenwriters, actors have been terrified by the prospects of artificial intelligence. They are worried that it could be used to create digital replicas of their likenesses — or that performances could be digitally altered — without payment or approval, and are seeking significant guardrails to protect against that.The actors, however, have had several demands that the studios balked at, including a revenue-sharing agreement for successful streaming shows. The actors have also asked for significant wage increases, including an 11 percent raise in the first year of a new contract. The studios last proposed a 5 percent raise.Though the entertainment industry had been bracing for a work stoppage by the writers going back to the beginning of the year, the actors’ uncharacteristic resolve this past summer caught studio executives off guard.The actors last went on strike in 1980. By comparison, the writers previously walked out in 2007 for 100 days.The first worrying sign came in June when more than 60,000 actors authorized a walkout with 98 percent of the vote — a margin that even eclipsed the writers’ strike authorization. Then, as bargaining began, the studios saw the actors’ list of demands. Union leaders handed over a list that totaled 48 pages, nearly triple the size of their asks during the last contract negotiations in 2020.While bargaining was going on, more than 1,000 actors, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Stiller, signed a letter to guild leadership saying that “we are prepared to strike.” The union called for a strike a little more than two weeks later. More

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      In Hollywood, the Strikes Are Just Part of the Problem

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      The entertainment industry is trying to figure out the economics of streaming. It’s also facing angst over a tech-powered future and fighting to stay culturally dominant.Existential hand-wringing has always been part of Hollywood’s personality. But the crisis in which the entertainment capital now finds itself is different.Instead of one unwelcome disruption to face — the VCR boom of the 1980s, for instance — or even overlapping ones (streaming, the pandemic), the movie and television business is being buffeted on a dizzying number of fronts. And no one seems to have any solutions.On Friday, roughly 160,000 unionized actors went on strike for the first time in 43 years, saying they were fed up with exorbitant pay for entertainment moguls and worried about not receiving a fair share of the spoils of a streaming-dominated future. They joined 11,500 already striking screenwriters, who walked out in May over similar concerns, including the threat of artificial intelligence. Actors and writers had not been on strike at the same time since 1960.“The industry that we once knew — when I did ‘The Nanny’ — everybody was part of the gravy train,” Fran Drescher, the former sitcom star and the president of the actors’ union, said while announcing the walkout. “Now it’s a walled-in vacuum.”At the same time, Hollywood’s two traditional businesses, the box office and television channels, are both badly broken.This was the year when moviegoing was finally supposed to bounce back from the pandemic, which closed many theaters for months on end. At last, cinemas would reclaim a position of cultural urgency.But ticket sales in the United States and Canada for the year to date (about $4.9 billion) are down 21 percent from the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Blips of hope, including strong sales for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” have been blotted out by disappointing results for expensive films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Elemental,” “The Flash,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and, to a lesser extent, “The Little Mermaid” and “Fast X.”The number of movie tickets sold globally may reach 7.2 billion in 2027, according to a recent report from the accounting firm PwC. Attendance totaled 7.9 billion in 2019.It’s a slowly dying business, but it’s at least better than a quickly dying one. Fewer than 50 million homes will pay for cable or satellite television by 2027, down from 64 million today and 100 million seven years ago, according to PwC. When it comes to traditional television, “the world has forever changed for the worse,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and WarnerBros. Discovery have relied for decades on television channels for fat profit growth. The end of that era has resulted in stock-price malaise. Disney shares have fallen 55 percent from their peak in March 2021. Paramount Global, which owns channels like MTV and CBS, has experienced an 83 percent decline over the same period.On Thursday, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, put the sale of the company’s “noncore” channels, including ABC and FX, on the table. He called the decline in traditional television “a reality we have to come to grips with.”In other words, it’s over.The latest installment of “Mission: Impossible” is opening this week and could be a rare bright spot at the box office.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesAnd then there is streaming. For a time, Wall Street was mesmerized by the subscriber-siphoning potential of services like Disney+, Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock, so the big Hollywood companies poured money into building online viewing platforms. Netflix was conquering the world. Amazon had arrived in Hollywood determined to make inroads, as had the ultra-deep-pocketed Apple. If the older entertainment companies wanted to remain competitive — not to mention relevant — there was only one direction to run.“You now have, really in control, tech companies who haven’t a care or clue, so to speak, about the entertainment business — it’s not a pejorative, it’s just the reality,” Barry Diller, the media veteran, said by phone this past week, referring to Amazon and Apple.“For each of these companies,” he added, “their minor business, not their major business, is entertainment. And yet, because of their size and influence, their minor interests are paramount in making any decisions about the future.”A little over a year ago, Netflix reported a subscriber loss for the first time in a decade, and Wall Street’s interest swiveled. Forget subscribers. Now we care about profits — at least when it comes to the old-line companies, because their traditional businesses (box office and channels) are in trouble.To make services like Disney+, Paramount+ and Max (formerly HBO Max) profitable, their parent companies have slashed billions of dollars in costs and eliminated more than 10,000 jobs. Studio executives also put the brakes on ordering new television series last year to rein in costs.WarnerBros. Discovery has said its streaming business, anchored by Max, will be profitable in 2023. Disney has promised profitability by September 2024, while Paramount had not forecast a date, except to say peak losses will occur this year, according to Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm.Giving in to union demands, which would threaten streaming profitability anew, is not something the companies will do without a fight.“In the short term, there will be pain,” said Tara Kole, a founding partner of JSSK, an entertainment law firm that counts Emma Stone, Adam McKay and Halle Berry as clients. “A lot of pain.”Every indication points to a long and destructive standoff. Agents who have worked in show business for 40 years said the anger surging through Hollywood exceeded anything they had ever seen.“Straight out of ‘Les Miz’” was how one longtime executive described the high-drama, us-against-them mood in a text to a reporter. Photos circulating online from this past week’s Allen & Company Sun Valley media conference, the annual “billionaires’ summer camp” attended by Hollywood’s haves, inflamed the situation.On a Paramount Pictures picket line on Friday, Ms. Drescher attacked Mr. Iger, something few people in Hollywood would dare to do without the cloak of anonymity. She criticized his pay package (his performance-based contract allows for up to $27 million annually, including stock awards, which is middle of the road for entertainment chief executives) and likened him and other Hollywood moguls to “land barons of a medieval time.”“It’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground,” she added. Mr. Iger had told CNBC on Thursday that the demands by the two unions were “just not realistic.”In the coming weeks, studios will probably cancel lucrative long-term deals with writers (and some actor-producers) by virtue of the force majeure clause in their contracts, which kick in on the 60th or 90th day of a strike, depending on how the agreements are structured. The force majeure clause states that when unforeseeable circumstances prevent someone from fulfilling a contract, the studios can cancel the deal without paying a penalty.Eventually, contracts with the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ union is known, will be hammered out.The deeper business challenges will remain.Nicole Sperling More

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      Striking Actors Join Writers on Picket Lines in LA and NYC

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      In Los Angeles and New York, actors and screenwriters braved the heat to admonish the major studios and demand a new deal.It was 10 a.m., adoring union members had already more or less mobbed their president, Fran Drescher, and the crowd was growing by the minute.Outside Netflix offices in Hollywood, a festive, buoyant mood had taken over the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue. It was a workers’ strike, to be sure. But as smiling protesters eagerly joined in chants and high-fived their picket signs, it felt a little like a summer Friday street party. One with a few famous guests.“We’re told that we should just be so grateful to get to do what we love to do — but not being compensated, not being protected while they are profiting off of our work,” said Amanda Crew from HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” who walked the picket line with Dustin Milligan from “Schitt’s Creek.”“That’s the myth of the actor: You’re doing art so you should just be so grateful because you’re living your dream. Why? Do we do that to doctors? We bring so much joy to people by entertaining them,” Crew added.It was the first of what could be many days of marching for actors, who picketed at locations across the country. They chanted, “Actors and writers unite!” as they marched along a short block in Times Square where Paramount conducts business; they passed out bottles of cold water and cans of La Croix outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan; and they bounced their picket signs to the sounds of Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” as it blared from a speaker in Hollywood.A day earlier, the Hollywood actors’ union, known as SAG-AFTRA, approved a strike for the first time in 43 years, joining forces with writers, who walked out in May.“There’s a renewed sense of excitement and solidarity,” said Alicia Carroll, a strike captain for the Writers Guild of America. “Writers have been out here for upwards of 70 days. It’s been a while and it’s hot. People are tired. So this is a confidence boost that we’re not alone in the industry in terms of issues.”The actors Bill Irwin and Susan Sarandon picketed in New York on Friday.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesThe actors and writers have been unable to agree to new contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major studios and streamers. Pay is a central issue, but the negotiations around compensation have been complicated by the emergence of streaming services and the rise of artificial intelligence.Actors, including Ms. Drescher, the president of their union, have cast the moment as an inflection point, arguing that the entire business model for the $134 billion American movie and television business has changed. They say their new contract needs to account for those changes with various guardrails and protections, including increased residual payments (a type of royalty) from streaming services. They are also worried about how A.I. could be used to replicate their work: scripts in the case of writers and digital replicas of their likenesses for actors.Hollywood companies have insisted that they worked in good faith to reach a reasonable deal at what has also been a difficult time for an industry that has been upended by streaming and is still dealing with the lingering effects of the pandemic.“The union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry,” the studio alliance said in a statement after SAG-AFTRA announced the strike.On Friday, writers said they were heartened to be joined on the picket lines by actors, many of whom have been marching with them for months in the black-and-yellow T-shirts that have become something of a uniform. It is the first time since 1960 that actors and screenwriters have been on strike at the same time.WGA leaders have shared picket line advice: Bring plenty of sunscreen and set a timer to reapply, watch out for traffic. But some actors were already veterans.The actor Greg Germann being interviewed at Netflix’s office in Los Angeles on Friday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times“I have not been to a picket without SAG-AFTRA members there. Sometimes they have even outnumbered us here in the east,” said Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a vice president of the Writers Guild of America, East. “They have been our stalwart supporters and comrades, and we intend to reciprocate.”“Suddenly,” she added, “the sleeping giant has awakened.”Indeed, some of the union’s most prominent members took to the streets Friday and drew notice as the afternoon wore on. Jason Sudeikis showed up at 30 Rock; Susan Sarandon went to the Flatiron neighborhood, where picketers targeted Warner Bros. Discovery; and Sean Astin marched outside the Netflix offices in Los Angeles.“Our careers have been turned into gig work,” Mr. Astin said over a chorus of frenetic honks of support from passing cars. “It’s not just that we’re not going to take it anymore — we actually can’t take it anymore.”An animated Ms. Drescher had arrived at the same location earlier in the day and was met with an exuberant crowd that wrapped itself around her.“This strike and this negotiation is going to impact everybody, and if we don’t take control of this situation from these greedy megalomaniacs, we are all going to be in threat of losing our livelihoods,” Ms. Drescher said.“I’m not really here for me as much as the 99.9 percent of the membership who are working people who are just trying to make a living to put food on the table, pay rent and get their kids off to school,” she added. “They are the ones that are being squeezed out of their livelihood, and it’s just pathetic.”Shara Ashley Zeiger, an actor, brought her 2-year-old, Lily, to the picket in front of NBC’s offices in New York. A sign protruded from her daughter’s stroller. Lily played with her food — and a tambourine.“The effects of this deal directly affect my daughter and my family,” Ms. Zeiger said.She added: “I had had a role on a project that was on a streamer, and their deal was they didn’t have to pay me residuals for two years. And it was in the middle of the pandemic.”Thousands of miles west in Los Angeles, Evan Shafran, an actor who had taken it upon himself to put together an hourslong playlist for the strike, wondered whether he might eventually need to apply for Medi-Cal, the state’s medical assistance program. He was able to string together enough work to pay for health insurance this year, but he could not be sure how things would pan out in the future.And last week, Mr. Shafran said, his car was stolen. But he took an Uber from his home in the San Fernando Valley to the Netflix offices anyway.“I spent $100 to come protest today even though I’m out of work,” he said. “I need to be out here.” More

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      Fran Drescher Takes Center Stage as the Actors’ Union Leader

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      Fran Drescher, who became a household name for her role on a 1990s sitcom, is now president of the union going on strike.The stage was different, and so was the tone. But the voice was unmistakable.Fran Drescher, the owner of a distinctly nasal, Queens-inflected accent, made her name in Hollywood for her starring role in the sitcom “The Nanny.” On Thursday, she appeared before dozens of cameras as the president of the actors’ union that voted unanimously earlier in the day to go on strike, delivering a fiery argument depicting the stakes of the decision.“The eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of labor are upon us,” Ms. Drescher said. “What happens to us is important. What’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor.”She shook her fists in indignation. “I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us!” she continued. “It is disgusting. Shame on them!”Ms. Drescher is the latest in a long line of familiar faces — Ronald Reagan, Patty Duke and Charlton Heston among them — to run SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents tens of thousands of screen actors. But it amounts to a surprising plot twist in her long career.As the Thursday news conference made clear, she is now a leading face of a resurgent labor movement nationally. How she handles it in the coming weeks, and possibly, months could help determine the fate of 160,000 actors.The actors’ strike, which will go into effect on Friday, marks a crisis point for Hollywood, which has already been rocked in recent years by the pandemic and sweeping technological shifts with the rise of streaming and the steady decline of cable television and box office returns. Hollywood writers have been on strike for months, and with actors now joining them — the first time since 1960 that both are on strike at the same time — the industry will essentially grind to a halt.Ms. Drescher, 65, has spent decades acting in Hollywood, both in television and film. Since her starring role on “The Nanny” in the 1990s, by far her most prominent role, she has appeared sporadically in television and feature films. She most recently starred in a short-lived sitcom for NBC called “Indebted,” which lasted 12 episodes before it was canceled in 2020.She has long expressed concerns about corporate greed, captioning photos with slogans like “STOP CAPITALIST GREED NOW.” It was enough for New York Magazine to put a headline on a 2017 blog post, “Your New Favorite Anti-Capitalist Icon Is Fran Drescher.”A few years later, in 2021, Ms. Drescher won election to the guild presidency in a deeply contested race versus the actor Matthew Modine. They represented different factions: Ms. Drescher for the establishment Unite for Strength Party, and Mr. Modine for an upstart group, Membership First.The race become so bitter that Mr. Modine accused Ms. Drescher of spreading falsehoods about him and reportedly said, “I’m ashamed of Fran Drescher, I’m disappointed. But she’ll be judged by the people in the world after she’s gone, or by whatever God she worships.”Unlike the screenwriters, who have gone on strike many times over the decades and historically been unified, actors have been known more for their intramural squabbling. Hollywood had been bracing for a writers strike since the beginning of the year — but few senior executives and producers were prepared for the actors to have the resolve to go through with it.When Ms. Drescher came into power she vowed to bring the union together and to bring an end to the “dysfunctional division in this union.”When the actors agreed to a strike authorization, it was with 97.9 percent of the vote — a stunning figure that even eclipsed the writers’ significant strike authorization. Last month, Membership First, the opposition party, endorsed Ms. Drescher’s re-election bid.Ms. Drescher on a picket line with members of the writers’ union in Los Angeles in May.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressStill, some of her public statements and actions in recent weeks have confounded many actors.In late June, days before the actors’ contract was set to expire, Ms. Drescher and the union’s lead negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, released a video that struck many viewers as surprisingly upbeat given the high stakes of the negotiations.“I just want to assure you that we are having extremely productive negotiations that are laser-focused on all the crucial issues that you told us are most important to you,” she said, wearing a military jacket. “We are standing strong, and we’re going to achieve a seminal deal!”Just days later, more than 1,000 actors, including Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, signed a letter expressing concerns to union leadership that they were not taking into account their willingness to strike. “We hope that, on our behalf, you will meet that moment and not miss it,” the letter said.Ms. Drescher — curiously, given her position — added her signature to the letter.On Monday, days before the actors’ contract was set to expire, Ms. Drescher drew attention on another front: She was attending a couture Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Puglia, Italy, where she posed for photos with Kim Kardashian. To her 362 million Instagram followers, Ms. Kardashian said of Ms. Drescher: “To my fashion icon! Always on my mood board! I seriously love this woman!”On Monday, Kim Kardashian posted this photo with Ms. Drescher at the Dolce & Gabbana fashion show in Puglia, Italy.Kim Kardashian, via InstagramThe backlash was quick and swift. The “General Hospital” actress Nancy Lee Grahn questioned if the photo was a joke. “I’m hoping this is not true. It can’t be. No one could be this stupid,” she wrote on Twitter.In a statement, a spokeswoman for the actors’ union said that Ms. Drescher was working as a “brand ambassador” for Dolce and Gabbana, and that the commitment was “fully known to the negotiating committee.” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland called criticism of Ms. Drescher’s appearance at the fashion show “outrageous” and “despicable.”Ms. Drescher addressed the issue at the news conference on Thursday. “It was absolute work,” she said, adding that she continued to communicate with negotiators from abroad. “I was in hair and makeup three hours a day, walking in heels on cobblestones. Doing things like that, which is work. Not fun.”While Mr. Crabtree-Ireland spoke at the news conference from a teleprompter, Ms. Drescher spoke off the cuff.“Wake up and smell the coffee,” she said of the studios. “We demand respect! You cannot exist without us!”“They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment,” she continued, pointing her finger forcefully toward the camera banks. “We stand in solidarity in unprecedented unity. Our union, our sister unions, and the unions around the world, are standing by us.” More

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      The SAG-AFTRA Union Could Strike in Hollywood This Week

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      The News: Actors could join writers on the picket lines.The actors may soon be joining Hollywood screenwriters on the picket lines if their union, SAG-AFTRA, and the major studios fail to reach a deal by midnight on Wednesday. The two sides are haggling over the same issues that are front and center for the Writers Guild of America: higher wages, increased residual payments (a type of royalty) and significant guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence.Should the actors go on strike, it will be the first time in 63 years that both the actors and the writers are out at the same time over a contract dispute.Members of the Writers Guild of America picketing in Burbank, Calif.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhy It Matters: A second strike could shut Hollywood down completely.Hollywood is already 80 percent shut down since the writers went on strike on May 2. While some television shows and movies continued filming, the writers were surprisingly effective in shutting down shows in production. If the actors join them on the picket lines, productions will be closed completely, a reality that will have a significant effect on the local economies in Los Angeles and other filming locales like Atlanta and New York City. During the last writers’ strike 15 years ago, the Los Angeles economy lost an estimated $2.1 billion.The effects of a dual strike would also soon be coming to your television, with network shows going into reruns and a likely proliferation of reality television. Also, actors would no longer be able to promote new films, a reality that already exists to a large degree because the writers’ strike forced the late-night shows to go dark.Background: Streaming and A.I. bring change.Not since Ronald Reagan was the president of the Screen Actors Guild have the writers and actors been on strike at the same time. Back then, the actors were fighting over residuals paid for licensing films for television. Today, the actors want to ensure higher wages and better residuals in an entertainment landscape in which studios are struggling to turn a profit after investing billions of dollars in streaming. The actors are also concerned about how their likenesses could be used with the advent of artificial intelligence.Guild members authorized the strike in early June, with 97.9 percent of members voting yes. Then on June 24, Fran Drescher, the president of SAG-AFTRA, and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director of the guild, informed its membership that they “remained optimistic” about the talks. They added that the negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association negotiating for the studios, had been “extremely productive.”A video prompted a group of more than 1,000 actors, including Ms. Drescher, to sign a letter that urged the union’s leadership to not settle for a lesser deal. “We are prepared to strike,” the letter said.On June 30, the union announced that it had extended its contract until Wednesday while the sides continued to talk.What’s Next: Could a deal still happen?After the parties negotiated all weekend, it remained unclear whether they were any closer to a resolution. Should they fail to make an agreement by midnight Pacific time on Wednesday, some 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members will be poised to join the 11,000 writers already on the picket line. More

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      Actors Authorize Potential Strike With Hollywood Writers Still Picketing

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      The NewsThe union that represents more than 160,000 film and television actors voted on Monday night to authorize a strike, two days before it is to begin negotiations on a new labor deal with the Hollywood studios. The result from members of the SAG-AFTRA union, with 98 percent authorizing a strike, was expected, and it came during the sixth week of a strike by Hollywood writers and just a day after the Directors Guild of America tentatively agreed to a new contract.“Together we lock elbows, and in unity we build a new contract that honors our contributions in this remarkable industry, reflects the new digital and streaming business model and brings ALL our concerns for protections and benefits into the now!” Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, said in a statement.About 65,000 members cast ballots, or 48 percent of eligible voters. The actors’ current agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, expires on June 30.Members of SAG-AFTRA supported the striking Writers Guild of America at a rally last month outside Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressWhy It Matters: The actors have the same worries as the writers.Many of the actors’ concerns echo what the Writers Guild of America is fighting for: higher wages; increased residual payments for their work, specifically for content on streaming services; and protections against using actors’ likenesses without permission as part of the enhanced abilities of artificial intelligence. According to the writers, the studios offered little more than “annual meetings to discuss” artificial intelligence, and they refused to bargain over limits on the technology.The Directors Guild, in contrast, said on Sunday that it had reached a “groundbreaking agreement confirming that A.I. is not a person and that generative A.I. cannot replace the duties performed by members.” Details about what that meant were not revealed.Background: It has been a long time since the last actors’ strike.The last time the actors went on strike was in 2000, in a dispute over commercial pay. The strike lasted close to six months.What’s Next: Negotiations begin on Wednesday.With negotiations expected to begin on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA is bullish about what this strike authorization means. “We’re obviously coming in from a position of strength, but we’re not looking to strike,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator. “We’re here to make a deal.” He added: “But we’re also not going to accept anything less than what our members deserve. If a strike is necessary to achieve that, we’re prepared.”The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement that “we are approaching these negotiations with the goal of achieving a new agreement that is beneficial to SAG-AFTRA members and the industry overall.” More