The longest work stoppage for film and television actors is all but over, as the Sag-Aftra union announced a tentative deal with studios to end a months-long strike on Wednesday night. The deal, which will end the 118-day strike that ground Hollywood to a halt and caused considerable financial pain for the nearly 2 million Americans who work in jobs directly or indirectly related to production, was hailed by union leadership as well as the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) as a historic breakthrough, with notable agreements on minimum pay, streaming-based bonuses and consent and compensation guarantees for the use of AI likenesses.
Overall, the actors union, like the writers union a month before it, secured major concessions from studios – a “capitulation by Hollywood’s biggest companies”, as the New York Times reported, and a stark reversal for studio heads who assumed the unions would be “relatively compliant” in reaching a deal.
