SAG-AFTRA Rallies Striking Actors Outside Paramount: ‘This Is Your Time’

One down, and more to come.

SAG-AFTRA is set to sit down with the studios today to restart talks on a deal for the actors.

California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have made striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits.

Everybody who needs to be in the room when SAG-AFTRA and the studios sit down for talks next week will be.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Lead negotiators for SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will head back to the table on Monday, Oct. 2, after a bitter concurrent strike led by the Writes Guild of America was resolved on Tuesday. “SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP will resume negotiations for a new TV/Theatrical contract on Monday, Oct.

This is Day 76 of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

SAG-AFTRA members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against 10 of the major video game companies. The vote was 98.32% in favor.  A total of 34,687 members cast ballots, representing a voting 27.47% of eligible voters. The guild’s last strike against the gaming companies, in 2016-17, lasted 183 days. The guild, meanwhile, has been on strike against the film and TV industry since July 14.

“Dancing with the Stars” floor. The actors union, which includes “DWTS” contestants Alyson Hannigan, Jamie Lynn Spears, Barry Williams, Mira Sorvino, Ariana Madix and Xochitl Gomez, said Thursday it supports its members taking part in the long-running ABC show.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Media watchdog GLAAD released its Studio Responsibility Index on Thursday, using its annual ranking of queer representation in mainstream films to stand with striking unions SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America. Convening in-person at the Los Angeles LGBTQ Center’s Ed Gould Plaza in Hollywood, leadership from both show business unions, queer talent and GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis spoke of the dangers that work stoppages from the strokes pose to inclusive storytelling.

With the actors’ strike now in its 63rd day, SAG-AFTRA leaders are ramping up their rhetoric against the studio heads, accusing them in the latest issue of the SAG-AFTRA Magazine of “behaving like petty tyrants,” “would-be feudal lords” and “land barons in feudal times.”

As the SAG-AFTRA strike clocked its 62nd day, and the WGA’s 135th, the former held a massive solidarity march today from Netflix HQ on Van Ness Blvd to the Melrose gates of Paramount to juice guilds’ spirits with the entertainment industry work stoppage running past Labor Day.

A bill that wouldmake striking workers in California eligible to receive unemployment benefits was approved on Wednesday by a 4-1 vote of the state Senate’sLabor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee. Senate Bill 799, which has already been passed by the state Assembly, now goes to a vote of the full Senate. If approved there, it will be up to Governor Gavin Newsom to either sign it into law or veto it. Last year, he vetoed 169 bills while signing nearly 1,000.

Now we see in detail how Pet Sematary‘s Jud Crandall came to the conclusion that sometimes dead is better.

A bill that would provide unemployment insurance to striking workers in California passed the state Assembly on Monday and now is headed to the Senate Labor Committee and then to the Senate floor. If passed there, Senate Bill 799 would go to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature.

Tim Burton is sharing his thoughts on AI getting inspired by his work for new creations. Earlier this year, BuzzFeed shared a piece where it prompted AI to “Tim Burton-Ize Disney Movies.”

Michaela Zee Jessica Chastain is encouraging independent producers to sign interim agreements amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. “If a majority of independent producers, come forward and sign the Interim Agreement deal it will show the AMPTP how wrong they are when they say our contract terms are unrealistic or unreasonable,” Chastain wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday.

Ezra Knight has been reelected president of SAG-AFTRA’s New York Local in a landslide victory that also gave his running mates a clean sweep of the election. Knight received nearly 73% of the votes cast in a four-person race for president. His four vice presidential running mates – Linda Powell, Anthony Rapp, Jim Kerr and Liz Zazzi – were also elected.

SAG-AFTRA’s presence at TIFF continued into Saturday with a special picket outside Amazon offices here in Toronto with Canada’s commercial actors union ACTRA, who’ve been in a 501 day contract lockout with the country’s advertising agency’s org.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Fran Drescher has been elected to a second term as president of SAG-AFTRA, as the union’s first studio strike in 43 years nears the two-month mark. Drescher was elected with 81.4% of the vote, defeating Maya Gilbert-Dunbar, who took 18.6%. Joely Fisher took 70.3% in her race for a second term as secretary-treasurer.

OK, so there was one good deal point –one– to come out of the AMPTP talks with the WGA, as SAG-AFTRA National Executive director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland admitted at TIFF today: It was the streamer’s transparency on viewership numbers.