US actors are expected to resume work after their union agreed a tentative deal with Hollywood studios to end a four-month strike.
Sag-Aftra reached agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers (AMPTP) in a unanimous vote.
The shutdown - combined with a separate writers' strike - paralysed the entertainment industry and disrupted numerous major films and TV shows.
After a grueling 118 days on strike, SAG-AFTRA has officially reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract with studios, a move that is heralding the end of the 2023 actors strike.
The SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Committee approved the agreement in a unanimous vote Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA announced. The strike will end at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. On Friday, the deal will go to the union’s national board for approval.
The performers union announced the provisional agreement Wednesday, after about two weeks of renewed negotiations. The development came not long before a deadline of 5 p.m. that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had set for the union to give their answer on whether they had a deal.
The actor and Sag-Aftra president, Fran Drescher, posted: “We did it!!!!”, and thanked her fellow union members “for hanging in and holding out for this historic deal!”
At the premiere for his wrestling film The Iron Claw, the actor Zac Efron described the deal as “incredible” while his co-star Jeremy Allen White – who also stars in the TV drama The Bear – exclaimed “That’s amazing!” after hearing the strike was over while being interviewed on the red carpet with Entertainment Tonight.
Hollywood producers also touted the tentative deal as establishing “a new paradigm” for the industry. The contract “gives Sag-Aftra the biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union, including the largest increase in minimum wages in the last forty years; a brand new residual for streaming programs; extensive consent and compensation protections in the use of artificial intelligence; and sizable contract increases on items across the board”, the AMPTP said in a statement on Wednesday night.