SAG-AFTRA Extends Members’ Covid Dues Relief For Last Time

a statement announcing the vote.While unanimity among SAG-AFTRA’s board is no guarantee that rank and file membership will agree to a strike, the issues listed in the guild’s statement very closely mirror those raised by the Writers Guild of America, which is in the third week of a strike that is increasingly interrupting Hollywood business.Writers have been on strike since May 2, and in part are seeking to reverse recent trends in the industry that have come to define the streaming era — for instance, they note sky-high salaries executives earn while creatives, especially writers, are struggling to support themselves. WGA is in particular calling out industry practices that they say have turned Hollywood into a “gig economy,” such as so-called “mini rooms” where writers with a television pitch must form a writer room on their own dime and create an entire season’s worth of scripts before a show is even greenlit.

SAG-AFTRA’s national board voted unanimously today to recommend that the union’s members authorize a strike in advance of its upcoming negotiations for a new film and TV contract.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer SAG-AFTRA announced Wednesday that it will hold a strike authorization vote as it seeks to get its “ducks in a row” ahead of June 7 negotiations with the major studios. The vote does not mean that the performers’ union will necessarily join the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines after its contract expires on June 30. In a press release, the union said its negotiating committee decided that a strike authorization would provide “maximum bargaining leverage” for the talks. “We must get all our ducks in a row should the need present itself,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in the release. “The prospect of a strike is not a first option, but a last resort. As my dad always says, ‘Better to have and not need than to need and not have!’”

SAG-AFTRA’s leadership, although often divided along internal party lines, presented a united front at the Los Angeles local’s annual membership meeting yesterday. They stressed the importance of solidarity in advance of the guild’s upcoming contract negotiations, sources tell Deadline.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has told her members that as the union prepares for its upcoming contract negotiations, which start June 7: “We must focus on modernizing our outdated and conservative contract. It is essential that we reshape our agreement to better reflect the new digital and streaming business model that is rapidly changing our industry.”

WGA strike continues and SAG-AFTRA looks to begin its own negotiations with the studios in June, SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland not only expressed solidarity with the WGA, but explained how actors’ problems are similar to those facing writers during a panel on the state of the TV industry.Speaking during the panel at SeriesFest in Denver on Monday, Crabtree-Ireland said current conditions in the industry are “not right.”“I think we all understand that things have been moving in the wrong direction as a result of the technological innovations in the industry, and that really has to stop because we can’t have a vital industry if the people who are responsible for creating all of that content can’t have a career, can’t pay for their basic living expenses,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “It’s not right.

Angelique Jackson SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher had a sobering message for Hollywood’s major studios as she joined a WGA picket line outside Paramount Pictures on Monday afternoon. “They feel like this strike is a strike for everybody in the industry,” Drescher said of SAG-AFTRA members and the WGA’s labor action. Drescher, who was elected SAG-AFTRA president in September 2021, marched arm in arm with Writers Guild of America West president Meredith Stiehm in a show of solidarity, joining a coalition of a few hundred members from each guild who were picketing outside Paramount starting at 9 a.m. PT as week two of the WGA strike began.

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher joined members of her guild marching in solidarity with Writers Guild of America members Monday on the picket lines in front of the entrance to Paramount Pictures’ backlot.Amid this display of solidarity, Drescher is preparing with SAG-AFTRA to begin talks on their own new contract, and she is signaling that actors need major change in Hollywood just as much as writers.“We can’t keep building on a contract that was developed in the 1980s,” Drescher told TheWrap. “I’m hoping that we go in with a new perspective, a different portal to enter the conversation just as we did with other talks that we were successful in resolving.

On the seventh day of the Writers Guild of America’s strike against Hollywood studios, guild leaders from both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, including actors union president Fran Drescher, hit the picket lines at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles.

Prince Harry has been spotted for the first time as he arrived at West Minister Abbey for his father's Coronation.

SAG-AFTRA, in partnership with the Motion Picture Association and a host of other industry unions and organizations, has launched the Green Council Initiative to promote eco-responsible entertainment. Founded by SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, the initiative’s top priority is the reduction of single-use plastic on set, on screen and in audience homes, while normalizing the use and depictions of reusables – much like the “Buckle Up Hollywood!” movement pushed to promote seat belt awareness back in the 1990s.

SAG-AFTRA, which starts its contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on June 7, is in “the same boat” with the Writers Guild as it strikes for a fair contract, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told a cheering crowd Wednesday night at the WGA strike rally at the Shrine Auditorium.

Jonathan Bailey is looking so suave on the red carpet!

Will the forthcoming Indiana Jones film “Dial of Destiny” be the last time we ever see the intrepid archaeologist on screen? Harrison Ford seems to think so.

Total Film.“I had been ambitious to do this film for 10 years, and there finally came a time when we all committed to that,” he added. “It was a joyous moment for me.

On the eve of a threatened writers’ strike, SAG-AFTRA is advising its members that they should “continue to work” in the event of a writers’ strike, which could come as soon as Monday night at midnight.

SAG-AFTRA and the Joint Policy Committee of the advertising industry have agreed to end their Covid safety protocols for commercial productions effective May 11.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford confirmed to Total Film magazine that the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will mark his final outing as the globetrotting archeologist, so don’t expect to see Ford pop up in the “Indiana Jones” television series that’s currently in early development at Disney+. “This is the final film in the series, and this is the last time I’ll play the character,” Ford said about his decades-long run as Indiana Jones coming to a definitive end. “I anticipate that it will be the last time that he appears in a film.” Ford added that he is aware of the potential “Indiana Jones” television series but stressed he “will not be involved in that, if it does come to fruition.”

60,000 country fans were left disappointed.

began on March 20 with several issues that needed to be addressed. At the top of the list was the issue of compensation for streaming TV shows and films and the abuse of mini-rooms in which studios require writers with a TV show pitch to assemble a writers’ room at scale pay to produce scripts before the pitch is even greenlit.More than 9,000 WGA members voted on April 17 to authorize their leaders to order a strike if a deal was not met and a drastic change was not in the future.