When Will The 2023 Hollywood Actors Strike End?

Negotiations resumed this week between the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, with the two sides discussing the latest offer from producers to end the strike that has now pushed beyond 100 days.

The big question is, when is this Hollywood actors strike going to end? And the answer is that while no one knows for sure, the feeling among industry experts and observers is that the two sides remain too far apart for it to end soon.

It would not be surprising if it pushed another two months or even into the new year, says Sanjay Sharma, a professor of finance and business economics at the USC Marshall School of Business.

“I think it could be anywhere from zero to three months,” he says. “I hope I’m wrong and it resolves much faster. There are a lot of year-end revenue pressures coming now, and investors don’t want to keep looking at a strike.”

What’s Taking So Long To End The SAG-AFTRA Strike?

So why hasn’t the strike been resolved yet? The two sides remain far apart on many issues, the main one (not surprisingly) being money. Actors seek higher residuals for streaming, which has become contentious. They want a big cut of the subscriber action; producers would prefer a different deal.

Other hang-ups also include artificial intelligence, which was a huge factor in the recently concluded writers strike. Actors don’t want their likenesses used with their permission and worry they could lose control over their own images.

As often happens during a strike, things have gotten nasty, with producers making threats (idle or not, who knows) about the fate of popular TV shows and actors throwing verbal jabs on Twitter and both sides planting stories in the trades.

A sign of good faith from either party could also go a long way toward smoothing over negotiations and getting things back on track weeks after talks to end the actors strike broke down. This week marked the first time the two sides have come face to face since then.

“They need to stop vilifying each other in the press,” Sharma says. “They both need to show they’re in this in good faith. And the studios need to open the dynamics of streaming to the actors.”

That type of transparency, he says, has been hard to come by.

An Uncertain Streaming Model

Sharma says that part of the reason the strike hasn’t resolved is that the producers have waded into new territory with streaming. The business model has not been figured out yet — streamers like Peacock are losing hundreds of millions of dollars, yet they continue to dump money into content to attract new subscribers and try to gain an advantage in the marketplace with good buzz for a breakout show.

But the current helter-skelter models aren’t sustainable, Sharma notes. And it’s difficult to negotiate when your future metrics are so uncertain.

“The streaming services haven’t really figured out how to make money,” he says. “Almost everyone is losing money in the streaming business. What has to happen is the studios and the actors have to come to the table and say, ‘This is our streaming revenue model for the next three years.’ They have to figure out, how do we make money, and how much money is to be made.”