Opinion

What the Actors’ Union Victory Means for Your Wallet.

Paul Hardart

By Paul Hardart

This week, SAG-AFTRA finally ended the 118-day actors’ strike after negotiating a tentative three-year agreement with the Hollywood studios. This marked the longest strike in the guild’s history, securing significant improvements in pay, benefits, and pensions and preliminary guardrails around AI use.

Across the country, members of SAG-AFTRA celebrated their long-fought and well-deserved victory. Kevin Bacon commemorated the strike’s end by reprising his Footloose dance in the attic of an empty barn.

But just as the actors begin to put away their picket signs and return to soundstages and movie sets, the curtain is already rising on new challenges for everyone in Hollywood: less content and fewer jobs.

Read full Bloomberg article.
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Paul Hardart is Clinical Professor of Marketing and Director of the Entertainment, Media and Technology Program at NYU Stern.