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The union representing film and television actors said Friday that its 76-member national board had voted with 86 percent support to send a preliminary contract with studios to members for ratification.
The ratification process begins on Tuesday and ends in the first week of December. However, actors can get back to work immediately.
Members are expected to approve the contract, which Fran Drescher, the union’s outspoken president, estimated 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, a higher minimum wage, better health care financing, studio concessions for self-recorded auditions, improved hair and makeup services on sets, and a requirement for intimacy coordinators for sex scenes, among other things.
“They had to give in,” Ms. Drescher said at a news conference during a 28-minute monologue that touched on Veterans Day, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula costume, her parents, the Roman Empire, studio stubbornness, 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 negotiates on behalf of studios, reached a 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 film 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 largest contract-on-contract win in the union’s history.” In a statement, the alliance said it was “pleased” that the SAG-AFTRA board had recommended ratification.
“We are also grateful that the entire sector has enthusiastically returned to work,” the alliance said.
The actors’ strike, combined with a writers’ strike that began in May and resolved in September, devastated the entertainment economy. Hundreds of thousands of crew members sat idle, some losing their homes and turning to food banks for groceries. Some small businesses that serve studios (costume dry cleaners, prop warehouses, catering companies) may never recover.
The twin strikes caused about $10 billion in losses nationwide, according to Todd Holmes, associate professor of entertainment media management at California State University, Northridge. Although the major studios are based in Los Angeles, they also use soundstage complexes in Georgia, New York, New Jersey and New Mexico.
Kevin Klowden, chief strategist at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank, was more cautious in 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 also includes Sharon Stone, Sean Astin and Rosie O’Donnell, made public a summary of the contents of the preliminary contract. Although the union did not get everything it asked for, it made significant gains.
The final sticking point involved “synthetic forgeries,” or the use of artificial intelligence to create a completely fictional character by splicing together recognizable features from real actors. The union received permission and compensation guarantees.
“You can imagine turning on a generative AI system trained on the performances of a number of actors to create, for example, a digital performer who has Julia Roberts’ smile,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director of SAG- AFTRA, in an interview. . “Prior to this agreement, there was no contractual or legal basis to require or prohibit consent. Now it will be so.”
But this strike was never about stars. A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence and Brad Pitt negotiate their own contracts (or, more accurately, their agents do). The preliminary contract includes minimum amounts, or which actors who have no influence whatsoever will be paid.
SAG-AFTRA had demanded an 11 percent wage increase for the minimum wage in the first year of a contract. The studios had insisted that they could offer no more than 5 percent, the same amount that had recently been given (and agreed to) by the writers’ and directors’ unions. Ultimately, the union managed to secure a 7 percent wage increase in the first year.
“This is very 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, because it’s always been the case that the AMPTP sets a number and everyone is held to it.”
SAG-AFTRA failed in one regard. Negotiations had begun to demand a percentage of revenue from streaming services. It had proposed a 2 percent share – later reduced to 1 percent, before switching to a per-subscriber fee. Ms. Drescher had made the requirement a priority, but companies like Netflix balked, calling it “a bridge too far.”
Instead, the studio alliance proposed a new residual (a kind of royalty) for streaming programs based on performance metrics, which the union, after some adjustments, agreed to. It’s 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 get a bonus.
Unlike the Writers Guild, however, SAG-AFTRA also got the studio alliance to agree to a system where 25 percent of bonus money goes into a fund distributed to actors in less successful streaming shows.
“I felt like, is this a win or a loss?” Mrs. Drescher said. ‘But we get the money. We have opened a new revenue stream. What matters is that we have ended up in another pocket.”
