Screen Actors Guild reach deal with studios, ending strike and six months of Hollywood shutdown

The actors guild announced last night that it has reached a tentative deal with the studios and streamers, ending the actors strike. The deal still has to be ratified by SAG members, but that is basically a foregone conclusion at this point.

The overlapping strikes of writers (which was resolved in September) and actors have resulted in more than six months of shutdown in the Hollywood industry this year, and billions of dollars in lost economic value. For streamers like Apple, it has severely impacted their content pipeline with almost no production happening in the US since the summer.

For a timeline recap, the writers went on strike in May, followed by the actors in July. (The directors guild agreed a deal without incurring strike action.)

After months of picketing on LA streets, the writers guild and studios finally negotiated a deal in late September, achieving deal points like a compensation bonus for most popular streaming shows streaming revenue compensation and AI protections.

At that time, the industry expectation was that the actors negotiations would follow quickly after, based on the pattern of the writers agreement. But that did not happen. The actors guild insisted that what they needed for their members was very different from the needs of writers.

Two months further on brings us to the present, with the actors guild finally announcing a deal has been reached with the studios. SAG described the deal as the “biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union”. The details of the contract will be published in the coming days; it will include significant minimum wage increases, a new residual structure for streaming programs, “extensive” AI protections and more.

The delays have severely damaged the production pipelines for broadcast TV networks and streamers, as we head into 2024. Although Apple is not as financially tied to the near-term success of their streaming service as other companies are, the ongoing performance of TV+ naturally depends on a steady stream of content being produced.

Due to the upcoming holiday periods and general scheduling complexities of rebooting Hollywood, it’s likely that filming on TV+ projects, like the much-delayed second season of Severance, will not be able to resume until January.