A SAG strike is imminent after the actors failed to reach an agreement with AMPTP Studios

LIVE UPDATES: Hollywood actors’ strike looms as SAG-AFTRA negotiations fail

SAG-AFTRA will hold a press conference at noon L.A. time, after its national board of directors voted on whether to make the strike official, joining an ongoing strike by Hollywood writers for the first time in 63 years.

“Studios and broadcast companies have implemented massive unilateral changes to our industry’s business model, while insisting we keep our contracts amber-frozen,” SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree Ireland said in a statement. It is the refusal to meaningfully engage with our major proposals and the fundamental disrespect shown by our members that has brought us to this point. The studios and live broadcasters have underestimated our members, as they are about to find out more fully.”

Union chairwoman Fran Drescher also criticized the Film and Television Producers Alliance – the bargaining group representing the major studios with which she publicly hoped to strike a deal a few weeks ago.

“AMPTP’s responses to the union’s most important proposals were an insult and disrespect for our enormous contributions to the industry,” Drescher said. Companies have refused to engage meaningfully on some topics and completely held us back on others. Until they negotiate in good faith, we cannot begin to reach an agreement.”

SAG-AFTRA prepares to strike. Here’s how this could affect Hollywood

The International Criminal Police Union (AMPTP) blamed the actors’ union for not reaching an agreement.

“Rather than continue negotiating, SAG-AFTRA has set us on a course that will deepen the financial hardships of the thousands who depend on the industry for their livelihoods,” AMPTP spokesman Scott Rowe said in a statement.

The actors’ demands largely mirror those of their counterparts in the Writers Guild of America, whose 11,000 members have been on strike for months. They want constraints on AI technology that can already mimic an artist’s image or writer’s style, and a new, transformative business model for the broadcast age, which unions say turns Hollywood’s creative process into a work-based economy.

Production on many shows and films has already been halted since the WGA went on strike at the beginning of May. A joint walkout by the cast is expected to close almost all remaining filming.

SAG-AFTRA and the studios tried for weeks to avert a second strike, extending the original June 30 deadline into this month, and filing a last-minute request for help from the US government’s federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which sent a top mediator to participate in the final round of talks on Wednesday.

It didn’t work, and Hollywood is now preparing for almost all of the on-air talent to get out of the way. List of actors like Meryl Streep, Jamie Lee Curtis, Quinta Bronson and Pedro Pascal earlier announced their readiness to strike in an open letter to SAG-AFTRA leaders. (Greg D. Reilson, director of public and congressional affairs, said the mediators will continue to be there to help.)

A double strike with the book would be almost unprecedented. While actors and writers have walked out several times—including the writers’ strike of 2007 and the six-month performers’ strike in 2000 that was one of the longest-running entertainment strikes in history—they’ve only picketed once: in 1960, when the screen. The Actors Guild was led by Ronald Reagan.

This double strike ended when the studios agreed—among other diversionary terms—to pay actors a percentage of the money earned when the films were licensed for television.