The Actors Strike Is Over, Ending Hollywood’s Long Limbo

After 118 days on the picket lines, the guild that represents actors says it has reached a tentative agreement for a new contract, signaling the end of the paralysis that has plagued Hollywood for months. On Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA announced that it had unanimously voted to approve a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and would officially end the strike at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, November 9. 

Actors returning to work means that production can resume, revving up the content machines that have been dormant for nearly six months. The actors began striking on July 14th, joining the Writers Guild of America, which was already more than two months into its own strike. SAG-AFTRA could not come to an agreement with AMPTP at the time over key issues such as increased compensation, streaming residuals, and AI, leading to rhetoric that grew increasingly polarized during the spring and summer.

“There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said of the writers and actors just one day after the studios’ talks with SAG-AFTRA broke down. “They are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher had a different view, saying on the first day of the strike, “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity.” She argued that the studios and streamers represented by the AMPTP pled poverty in negotiations while “giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history, at this very moment.”

The actors strike elevated Drescher into a new type of public role, that of a labor leader. Though she got flack for flying to Italy for a Dolce & Gabbana promotional event just days before the SAG-AFTRA contract was set to expire, the actor previously best known for playing The Nanny approached her new position with such passion that even Saturday Night Live couldn’t pass up spoofing her in a recent sketch. Meanwhile, Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, and some of their fellow CEOs found themselves cast in the villain role over the summer, as picketers brandished signs admonishing the studio bosses.

The dual strikes wreaked devastation across the entertainment industry—shutting down productions, bumping awards shows, forcing studios to postpone blockbusters rather than releasing projects without actors to promote them, and putting thousands of crew members out of work. It was the first time both unions had been on strike since 1960, and the shock waves rippled out beyond Hollywood. The production shutdown has cost the California economy an estimated $5 billion.

When the writers strike ended September 24, many in the industry assumed the actors would soon follow. SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP restarted talks on October 2—with top executives like Iger and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in the room—only to quickly hit a wall. On October 11, the AMPTP issued a statement that “conversations are no longer moving us in a productive direction.” Sarandos himself told a crowd of Hollywood professionals at the Bloomberg Screentime conference that one of SAG-AFTRA’s proposals—that the streamers pay a set rate per subscriber as a sort of bonus for actors—was “a bridge too far.” SAG-AFTRA leaders disputed the AMPTP’s characterization of the payment as a “levy” on streamers.

Talks resumed in a more intensive way on October 24 against a backdrop of an increasingly panicked Hollywood. “This year is over,” one film and television producer told Vanity Fair earlier this month. A top talent agent was already concerned about 2024: “The way to save the year is by getting the strike resolved before year’s end, because that’ll protect next year to some extent.” Some of the most famous members of SAG-AFTRA—among them George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, and Tyler Perry—reportedly held Zoom meetings with guild leaders to discuss a path to resuming the talks. A group of boldface names even offered to remove the $1 million cap on dues to help pay those lower on the call sheet, a proposal that Drescher later explained would violate federal labor regulations.

After talks resumed, hundreds of SAG-AFTRA members including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Paul Walter Hauser, Timothy Olyphant, and Maya Hawke signed an open letter addressed to the negotiating committee, telling them, “we would rather stay on strike than take a bad deal.”

The talks appeared to pick up steam toward the end of October, and negotiators spent the better part of the pre-Halloween weekend working behind closed doors. On Sunday evening, SAG-AFTRA tweeted that they had “discussed all open proposals, including AI, with the AMPTP,” and asked members to “flood picket lines” to make their voices heard. But talks continued to stretch on as the two sides remained at odds over key issues, particularly around how to protect actors against the use of AI. On Tuesday evening, SAG-AFTRA said that it had sent 10 hours deliberating that day and thanked its members for “your patience and support while we finish our work.”