It’s become increasingly clear over the last few months that pretty much nobody in Hollywood wants another 2023; the aftereffects of the strikes that broke out over that summer are still being felt throughout the industry, making all involved just a tad skittish of any big dramatic moves or whiffs of brinksmanship. That might help explain news today, revealing that acting union SAG-AFTRA has just joined the Writers Guild in (probably) signing a deal with the major Hollywood studios well ahead of any looming deadlines, all but guaranteeing there won’t be a repeat of the strikes in 2026. Or 2027 or 2028, as it happens, since this is another super-sized, extended four-year deal, much like the one signed by their colleagues over at the WGA back in April.
This is all per Deadline, which reports that SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have reached a tentative agreement after a relatively short bout of negotiations. Details of the new contract—which still needs to be brought to the union’s board, and then ratified by its members—aren’t being publicly disclosed yet. (Although, as with the WGA contract—which included an infusion of cash to the writers’ health insurance—it’s reportedly going to involve the studios making a hefty contribution to the union’s infrastructure, in this case its pension plan.) There are also reports that lead negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland—widely considered to be Hollywood’s premiere Crabtree-Ireland—was holding off on okaying the extended deal until the studios expanded the fairly provisional AI “guardrails” that were put in place when peace talks finally broke out back in 2023. Full details of the contract will become public knowledge after it’s been reviewed by the board of the union, which recently elected actor Sean Astin as its latest president.
That leaves just one of the big three Hollywood unions to hash out its 2026 plans. The Directors Guild Of America, currently headed up by Christopher Nolan, is set to resume negotiations of their own with the AMPTP on May 11. The DGA was the only one of the three organizations that didn’t go on strike back in 2023—it’s only ever hit the picket lines once, actually, for just three hours in 1987—so it’ll be interesting to see if that normally more placid bunch somehow end up being the most contentious of the lot this time around. (And whether they take their own extended contract to stay in sync with the writers and actors, since the increased pressure from all three contracts expiring at roughly the same time is presumably a useful pressure for union negotiators to exploit.)
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