Hollywood actors have reached a tentative agreement with the major film and television studios to end a strike, the actors union announced Wednesday.
The strike had shut down production across the industry for nearly four months and raised existential questions over the future of the entertainment business.
“In a unanimous vote this afternoon, the SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Committee approved a tentative agreement with the AMPTP bringing an end to the 118 day strike,” the actors union said in a Wednesday night announcement.
The strike will officially end at midnight, the union said. The union and the studios have not yet publicly acknowledged the resolution.
Terms of the deal, which still must be ratified by the union’s members, were not immediately disclosed. But the agreement sets the stage for the roughly 160,000 actors represented by SAG-AFTRA to return to work after they walked off the set on July 14, joining the writers’ guild in a historic double strike against the studios – the first time the writers and actors had simultaneously been on strike in more than 60 years.
While the writers’ strike was resolved in September, production has remained shuttered as the actors continued to strike and negotiate their contract. At the center of both standoffs is the rise of artificial intelligence, which threatens to upend the entire entertainment business, and became one of the final and most elusive issues the actors and studios sought agreement on.
But a person familiar with the matter told CNN that the studios have agreed to adjust language on AI, appearing to resolve that outstanding issue, at least.
Still, the deal could face challenges getting ratified. An online petition signed by more than 5,000 members recently urged the union to take a hard line in negotiations toward a final deal, saying they would not agree to a deal that did not meet the demands laid out at the start of the strike.
“We have not come all this way to cave now,” said the letter. “We have not gone without work, without pay, and walked picket lines for months just to give up on everything we’ve been fighting for. We cannot and will not accept a contract that fails to address the vital and existential problems that we all need fixed.”
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
Read the full article here