Hollywood’s Relief: Actors’ Strike Ends and Filming Resumes

A feeling of deliverance: this is the spirit that dominates Thursday in Hollywood, with the end of the actors’ strike paralyzing the sector, and the race now launched to resume filming in order to save the films and series of 2024 which can still being.

A month and a half after that of the screenwriters, the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA reached an agreement on Wednesday with the studios for a new three-year collective agreement.

This new contract, which notably includes a significant increase in minimum salaries and safeguards in terms of artificial intelligence, must still be formally adopted by the profession. But actors can immediately resume shooting and promoting their films.

Enough to revive an industry paralyzed for a total of six months by the double social movement of screenwriters and actors. A historic crisis, without equivalent since 1960 in Hollywood.

The deal comes just in time for studios to complete many blockbusters expected in theaters next summer. Some series may even be completed for spring.

Interrupted for four months, filming of “Deadpool 3”, the highly anticipated sequel to the adventures of the most degenerate of superheroes, must resume before Thanksgiving (end of November), according to Variety magazine.

Actors from delayed series like “Stranger Things” also share their relief. “WE SUCCEEDED!!!”, rejoiced Noah Schnapp, headliner of the soap opera, on Instagram.

If certain films, including the next “Mission Impossible” by Tom Cruise, have given up on being released in theaters next summer, “there will be a summer film season next year”, observes Jonathan Handel, lawyer specializing in film law. entertainment.

Without an agreement before the end of year holidays, it would have been “in great danger”, he recalls.

The compromise also comes at the right time for the Hollywood awards season: the Oscars are traditionally held in March, but before that many ceremonies such as the Golden Globes or the Critics Choice Awards, scheduled for January, saw this strike drag on with worry.

– “Historic contract” –

As of Thursday morning, invitations to star-studded premieres were sent to voters for numerous awards, including a gala bringing together Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in Los Angeles for the Netflix film “May December.”

Boycotting red carpets for months, stars will be able to promote their films like “Wonka”, with Timothée Chalamet, and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”, with Jason Momoa.

“We can really be happy about this contract,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said on CNN Thursday.

“It’s a great relief and a great happiness that we held on (…) and that we obtained a historic and founding contract,” insisted the ex-star of the series “A Nanny from Hell” .

In addition to salary increases for 160,000 actors, dancers, stuntmen and other professionals from the small and big screen, the agreement guarantees for the first time a bonus system when a film or series is successful on a streaming platform.

It also provides that studios will have to “ask permission for everything” when they use artificial intelligence to digitally insert famous actors into films, she summarized.

While the double strike cost the US economy at least $6 billion, the agreement was widely welcomed by US Democrats, including the president himself. “Collective bargaining works,” rejoiced Joe Biden in a press release.

In Los Angeles, the entrance to most studios finally regained calm Thursday morning, after six months of daily protests. In front of the Warner Bros site, a handful of actors still came to celebrate their victory.

“I feel relieved. (…) Now we can release the tension,” comedian Dan DW McCann told AFP. “I hope that the contract will live up to our expectations. And that we can put all this behind us and get back to work.”