Cut! Actors’ strike threatens to bring Hollywood to a standstill
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?To have one trade union paralyse Hollywood was strange; two doing it in quick succession feels like carelessness. A threatened walkout by actors, which could begin as early as next week, is throwing major film and television studios into chaos.
The contract dispute, this time between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and their white-collar bosses, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), is causing what industry experts have called a “virtual strike”.
Production deadlines for dozens of major projects have been scrapped amid growing signs that the SAG, which has 120,000 members, will fail to resolve its dispute before a deadline for industrial action on Tuesday next week.
Most major film shoots are now either being put on hold, or wrapping-up early to avoid disruption.
“No one is doing anything that finishes after 30 June, and nobody’s starting anything now,” one lawyer representing actors told The Hollywood Reporter. “This is the impact of a strike already.”
Victims of the crisis include Sir Ridley Scott, who has delayed filming his Robin Hood remake, Nottingham, until late summer. Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson and Steven Soderbergh are meanwhile rushing to finish their current projects by 1 July. Those films are Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, The Lovely Bones and The Informant.
- from UK