The news of a tentative agreement in the Hollywood actors’ strike is being met with celebrations in British Columbia’s film and television sector.
“I feel ecstatic,” Vancouver-based actor Al Miro told Global News.
“We’ve all been waiting for this to happen for a long time, and there’s been so many times where we thought this was going to happen and we’re close, and then it didn’t, so it feels a bit unreal.”
The deal between the 60,000 members of the the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Performers (SAG-AFTRA) and the major production houses must still be ratified by members.
However, union leadership said the strike, which began on July 14, will end at 12:01 a.m. Thursday morning.
Prem Gill, CEO of Creative BC, called the agreement “absolutely great news” for the province’s film and television industry, often known as Hollywood North.
The government-supported non-profit estimates the film sector supports up to 70,000 jobs and is worth up to $3.6 billion to the province’s economy annually.
“There’s a lot of people in British Columbia who are eager to get back to work and working on productions,” Gill said.
“I know folks have been a bit stressed lately that there hasn’t been as much production going on, so hopefully this means a swift return to production and shows coming back up here and people getting back to work.”
Gill said some projects that were already in pre-production may be able to get back up and running before the winter break, but that realistically the industry is more likely to return to a more normal pattern in January.
She added it was too soon to know if there was any risk of the industry shrinking or losing key skilled workers due to the length of the work stoppage.
“Remember, this is a global thing, right? Like every production centre, whether it’s B.C., even Los Angeles itself, New York, Toronto, there is going to be a shift,” Gill said.
“I think that the industry and the sector here are in a strong position to hopefully continue to attract that business to British Columbia.”
Miro, who also works as an acting coach, said he was able to survive the strike by teaching more classes and auditioning for several Canadian productions that weren’t affected by the job action.
But he said the stoppage has been tough on everyone in the industry.
“For a lot of actors we are kind of used to making money other ways as well, so a lot of us kind of just did our other side gig,” he said.
I do know some people that work behind the camera, and for them it has been a little tougher in the sense that’s usually their main sense of income … people have been struggling.”
SAG-AFTRA is expected to make make details of the tentative deal public following a Friday meeting where board members will review the contract.
Key sticking points in bargaining included short-term compensation, future royalty payments and control of actors’ likenesses in the context of artificial intelligence.
The end of the strike announcement came hours after Disney CEO Robert Iger and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav reported their latest earning statements. Both executives said they hoped the strike would be resolved soon.
The agreement comes nearly a month and a half after the striking Writers’ Guild of America reached its own settlement with the studios, ending its own bitter strike that lasted for 146 days.
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