Hollywood’s strikes are over

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) voted in favor (78.33 percent to 21.67 percent) of the agreement negotiated last month with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that represents the studios.

The new deal runs through June 30th, 2026, following the first time in 63 years that the unions for actors and writers were on strike at the same time.

SAG-AFTRA:

The deal includes more than $1 billion in new compensation and benefit plan funding, along with outsized gains to the traditional residuals formulas. It offers a new compensation model for performers working in streaming, with a substantial bonus on top of existing residuals structures, plus compensation escalation for principal and background actors. Additionally, the deal establishes detailed informed consent and compensation guardrails for the use of AI, hair and makeup equity, meaningful protections for the casting process, sexual harassment prevention protections and more.

It was scheduled to debut in June 2024, but it’s now set to release on May 23rd, 2025, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I didn’t say “Part Two” in my headline because apparently this sequel is getting a new subtitle. (Smart choice!)

SAG-AFTRA is still on strike.

In a series of posts on X, the Screen Actors Guild announced yesterday evening that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers invited it back to negotiations.

AMPTP walked away from talks earlier this month over its demand for two percent of streaming revenue. According to Variety, the union has amended that to 57 cents per year, per subscriber.

Yesterday marked the 100th day of the strike.

The group of stars, which also includes Emma Stone, Ben Affleck, and Tyler Perry, met with the leaders of SAG-AFTRA this week, proposing the removal of the $1 million cap on membership dues, Deadline reports.

Clooney tells Deadline that would result in over $50 million paid to the union every year, which could go toward improving health care benefits:

A lot of the top earners want to be part of the solution. We’ve offered to remove the cap on dues, which would bring over $50 million to the union annually. Well over $150 million over the next three years.

Talks between SAG-AFTRA and the studios to end the union’s ongoing strike were derailed on Wednesday evening. One area of contention was the actor’s union request for viewership bonuses.

Sarandos defended the studios, calling the bonuses “a bridge too far to add deep into the negotiations right now,” in a conversation with Bloomberg journalist Lucas Shaw on Thursday morning at the Screentime conference in Los Angeles.

The Hollywood Reporter has a good read this morning on the last-minute negotiations to end the writers strike. It seems to come pretty much entirely from the studios’ perspective, but it’s a good read anyway.

Apparently the writers guild and the studios were barely even negotiating — everybody was waiting on the other side to make a move. But with the help of some showrunners and some late-night negotiating, a deal finally got done. And then almost fell apart. And then finally got done for real.

Director Tim Burton told The Independent two days ago that Beetlejuice 2 was only a “day and a half” away from completion when Hollywood actors went on strike.

“It is 99 percent done,” The Independent quotes him as saying. The movie is due out next September and, incredibly, has not just Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara reprising their roles, but also brings in Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe.

In an 8-K filing with the SEC, Warner Bros. Discovery says it’s lowering its earnings expectations by about $300 to $500 million amidst the writers and actors strike. The company now anticipates earning anywhere from $10.5 to $11 billion for 2023:

While WBD is hopeful that these strikes will be resolved soon, it cannot predict when the strikes will ultimately end. With both guilds still on strike today, the Company now assumes the financial impact to WBD of these strikes will persist through the end of 2023.

SAG-AFTRA members will vote on whether or not to authorize a strike against the gaming industry, the guild says, as negotiations with major companies have reached a “stalemate” over issues like pay, safety, and the “unrestrained use” of AI (via Deadline).

Authorization doesn’t guarantee a strike but does permit the guild to declare one if negotiations fail. SAG is currently on strike in Hollywood over similar issues.

The  International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) union announced that over 80 percent of the 18 in-house Visual Effects (VFX) crewmembers at Walt Disney Pictures expressed a desire to unionize. Their organizing follows a push at Marvel that started earlier this month and is in the midst of ongoing strikes by the actors’ and writers’ guilds.

IATSE VFX Organizer Mark Patch:

Today, courageous Visual Effects workers at Walt Disney Pictures overcame the fear and silence that have kept our community from having a voice on the job for decades. With an overwhelming supermajority of these crews demanding an end to ‘the way VFX has always been,’ this is a clear sign that our campaign is not about one studio or corporation. It’s about VFX workers across the industry using the tools at our disposal to uplift ourselves and forge a better path forward.

After the AMPTP publicly released its counteroffer to striking writers yesterday, the WGA posted a more detailed update on their negotiations, stating the latest proposals offered by Hollywood studios still aren’t enough:

We will continue to advocate for proposals that fully address our issues rather than accept half measures... As we have repeated from the first day of our first member meeting — and on every day of this strike — our demands are fair and reasonable, and the companies can afford them.

Disclosure: The Verge’s editorial staff is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.

Amazon has canceled A League of Their Own again. Amazon previously canceled the show, a gorgeous queer-centered story about professional woman baseball players in the 1940s. Then Amazon brought the show back for a shortened season to wrap up storylines.

Now it's canceled the show again, with Deadline suggesting it was “believed to stem from the length of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.” Which...sure. That’s a claim you can make, but it certainly feels like a punishment more than a business decision.

When the show was initially canceled, showrunner Will Graham tweeted that its audience was “very big,” but he was unclear on exact numbers due to the practice of streaming services not disclosing streaming metrics.

This one feels like a total swing and a miss on Amazon’s part.