The Hollywood actors’ union began to strike at midnight on Thursday, after negotiations to reach a new contract with production studios ended without an agreement.
Actors will join writers in the first industry-wide walkout for 63 years, effectively bringing the giant movie and television business to a halt.
The twin strikes, the first such joint effort in more than 60 years, will add to the economic damage from the writers’ walkout that started on May 2, delivering another blow to the multibillion-dollar industry as it struggles with changes to its business.
At 0701 GMT, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), representing around 160,000 movie and television actors, tweeted a black picture alongside the message: “12:01 a.m. PT That’s a wrap!”
SAG-AFTRA had issued a strike order after last-ditch talks with studios over dwindling pay and the threat posed by artificial intelligence ended without an agreement.
“This is a moment of history, a moment of truth – if we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble,” SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher told a press conference, following the union board’s unanimous vote to strike. “We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business.”
The former star of The Nanny TV show, added: “We are the victims here. We are being victimised by a very greedy entity.”
In New York City and Los Angeles, actors marched outside the offices of Warner Bros, Paramount and other major studios, chanting and waving signs.
“I actually make less money working in film than I did in the year 1990,” said Andrea Salloum, an actor who joined scores of people picketing the Netflix offices in Los Angeles. “It’s really scary with the artificial intelligence.”
Writers have already spent 11 weeks protesting outside the headquarters of the likes of Disney and Netflix, after their demands for better pay and guarantees over the use artificial intelligence were not met.
Movie studios have already begun reshuffling their calendars, and if the strikes drag on, major film releases could be postponed too.
A strike prevents actors from promoting some of the year’s biggest releases, at the peak of the industry’s summer blockbuster season.
Drescher told AFP that SAG-AFTRA was “duped” into extending negotiations for two weeks by studios that wanted to promote their movies.
“But we were duped. They stayed behind closed doors, they kept cancelling our meetings, wasting time,” she said. “It was probably all to have more time to promote their summer movies. Because nothing came out of it that was significant.”
During that two-week period, major premieres have been held around the world for blockbusters including Warner’s Barbie, Universal’s Oppenheimer and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
The cast of Oppenheimer walked out of their London premiere in solidarity with the strike.
“We know it’s a critical time at this point in the industry and the issues that are involved need to be addressed – there are difficult conversations,” British actor Kenneth Branagh said on the red carpet just before the strike was announced. “I know everybody’s trying to get a fair deal, that’s what’s required, so we’ll support that.”
SAG-AFTRA represents actors from A-list stars such as Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Glenn Close to day players who do small roles on television series.
The last time the actors’ union went on strike, in 1980, it lasted more than three months.
This time, some 98% of members voted to pre-approve industrial action if a deal was not reached.
The union said actors’ pay has been “severely eroded by the rise of the streaming ecosystem” and has warned that “artificial intelligence (AI) poses an existential threat to creative professions”.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) said that it had offered “historic” pay rises and a “groundbreaking AI proposal” to actors, who had chosen “a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry”.
However, Phil Lord – the writer, director and producer behind hits such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Lego Movie – poured scorn on the studios’ version of events.
“AMPTP has played hardball instead of helping to solve entirely solvable problems that endanger writers and actors on the lower ends of the pay scale,” he tweeted.
While the writers’ strike has already dramatically reduced the number of movies and shows in production, an actors’ walkout shutters almost everything.
“I feel sad and it is painful and it’s necessary,” said actor Jennifer Van Dyck, on the picket line in New York on Thursday. “No one wants to go on strike, but there’s just no way we can proceed.”
Actors and writers are also united on demands for guarantees about the use of AI.
SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland slammed the studios’ latest stance on AI.
He told journalists that studios had proposed to be allowed to scan the faces of background performers – or extras – for the payment of one day’s work, and be able to own and use their likeness “for the rest of eternity, in any project they want, with no consent and no compensation”.
Unions nationwide have been taking harder lines in negotiations over better wages and benefits, from railroad employees and airline pilots to Amazon.com and Starbucks workers.
The largest US autoworkers’ union and UPS employees are also in the midst of contract talks that could be lengthy.
Both SAG-AFTRA – Hollywood’s largest union, representing 160,000 film and television actors – and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are demanding increases in base pay and residuals, or fees paid from streaming television, plus assurances that their work will not be replaced by AI.
Britain’s main entertainment industry union, Equity, said it backed its US counterpart and would be bringing up many of the same issues in its own contract negotiations over the next 12 months.
The Hollywood action would have a growing impact on the global industry, including in Britain, if locals were working on projects with people on SAG-AFTRA contracts, Equity General Secretary Paul Fleming said in an interview.
“The longer it goes on, the bigger the impact,” he said.