Actors officially join writers on strike. Barbenheimer is already feeling the impact
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Seventy-three days into the writers strike, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists officially went on strike on Thursday, according to The New York Times.
As many as 160,000 actors associated with the union are striking for better pay and safeguards against the use of artificial intelligence, per BBC. The union was in talks with major studios ahead of Wednesday at midnight — the deadline to resolve before strike action — but no resolution was reached.
The actors are joining an ongoing writers strike. There won’t be a strike from the Directors Guild of America since a contract was negotiated in June, according to BBC.
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The official decision to strike coincided with the premiere of “Oppenheimer” in London. With a strike looming on the horizon, the cast reportedly walked out of the premiere in solidarity with the strike, The New York Times reported.
“You’ve seen them here earlier on the red carpet,” the “Oppenheimer” director said, per The Independent. “Unfortunately, they’re off to write their picket signs for what we believe to be an imminent strike by Sag (Screen Actors Guild), joining one of my guilds, the Writers Guild, in the struggle for fair wages for working members of the unions, and we support them.”
The combination of the writers strike and actors strike “would stop all production of film and scripted television shows in the United States, except for independent productions that are not covered by labor contracts with unions,” Reuters reported.
Two of the biggest movies of the summer, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” (affectionally called “Barbenheimer)”, have already been impacted by the strikes.
While the cast of “Oppenheimer” left the premiere in London on Thursday, “Barbie” co-writer Noah Baumbach didn’t attend the world premiere of “Barbie” in Los Angeles on Sunday.
“My co-writer and co-creator, my partner in love and art, Noah Baumbach is not here,” Greta Gerwig, the film’s director, said, per Variety. “He is passionately supporting the fight of the Writers Guild of America. He is a Barbie girl. Nothing in ‘Barbie’ happened without him, and nothing in Hollywood happens without writers.”
“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” are already completed, so their release won’t be impeded, even if some actors may choose to no longer attend publicity for the films. The strike means many actors won’t walk the red carpet or do interviews, Chris Isidore wrote for CNN.
What does actors strike mean?
The double strike, which hasn’t been seen since 1960, will continue to bring productions to a halt and render the fall television season one dominated by reruns.
Due to the ongoing writers strike, a number of productions have already stopped, CNN reported. Some shows, like daytime soap operas, may be able to continue unimpeded, since the writers of those shows aren’t always part of the union and the actors work under a different contract.
Shows like “Abbott Elementary,” “Stranger Things,” “Saturday Night Live,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Last of Us,” “Andor” and other shows have already been affected by the writers strike, per Today.
The actors strike means “fresh seasons of comedies and dramas that typically start in September will likely be delayed,” Reuters reported.
Disney+ CEO Bob Iger told CNBC, “We managed as an industry to negotiate a very good deal with the Directors Guild, that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business. We wanted to do the same thing with the writers. And we’d like to do the same thing with the actors.”
“There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of challenges that this business is already facing, that is quite frankly, very disruptive,” Iger said to CNBC.
Iger forecasted that the impact of the strike could be far-reaching. “It will have a very, very damaging effect on the whole business,” he said to CNBC. “And unfortunately there’s huge collateral damage to the industry, to people who are, you know, support services.”
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said, per NBC News, “What happens here is important because what’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor, by means of when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run.”
