SAGpocalypse Now: All Hope is Lost

Let's hope James Cameron's Thespbot 2000 technology works, because from the looks of how things are progressing on the SAG deal front, the sun could be setting on the Age of the Human Hollywood Actor. More »

WGA Still Weighing Their Jay Leno Scab-Flogging Options

A number of notable talk show hosts made the controversial choice to cross picket lines and not grow out a strike beard during last year's WGA strike, Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres among them. More »

SAG To Renew Kinder, Gentler Saber-Rattling Feb. 17

After finally turning down the volume on Alan Rosenberg's bluesy twang, SAG leadership plans to return next week to relatively quiet — and hopefully swift — negotiations with the major studios. More »

Alan Rosenberg Strikes Out In Court

SAG president Alan Rosenberg's final opportunity to preserve his strike-hungry executive director and negotiating committee fizzled this morning in Superior Court. More »

Torture-Defending GOP Pal Rushes To Alan Rosenberg's Legal Aid

No wonder Alan Rosenberg's rejected restraining-order appeal yesterday included a few errors: Any lawyer moving to SAG squabbles from a career in right-wing crisis management would encounter a severe learning curve at some point. More »

Judge Blocks Alan Rosenberg's Restraining Order Against His Own Union

SAG president Alan Rosenberg's ploy to halt contract talks and reinstate his closest strike-friendly ally could be going better, with a judge this afternoon rejecting his petition for a temporary restraining order. More »

Defiant Alan Rosenberg Calls For Sympathy-Vote Resolution

This whole SAG presidency thing may not be working out so well for Alan Rosenberg, but so what? His blues-career Plan B is taking off before our eyes — have a listen after the jump! More »

Chief Negotiator In Limbo as SAG Board Implodes

Conflicting reports emerged late Monday from SAG's emergency national board meeting, where at least one member says Doug Allen is out as the union's chief negotiator. More »

Actors at Each Others' Throats as SAG Strike Threat Fades

SAG's protracted pursuit of a strike authorization vote may end as early as tomorrow, with the bitter aftertaste of a secret awards blacklist lingering in an emergency meeting underway at union HQ. More »

SAG Celebrity-Standoff Holiday Cards: Joyeux No-el and Happy Yea-nukkah!

We thought a fun way to keep track of where celebrities stand on the impending SAG strike would be with some printable holiday greeting cards!

Fox To Dump High-Maintenance SAG For Cheaper, Sluttier AFTRA

A rumor that Twentieth Century Fox Television—producers of some of your most beloved stories, including 24, My Name is Earl, and Family Guy—would be switching over to an all-AFTRA format got this official response:

NY SAG Insurgents Call For Leaders' Heads

Hollywood awoke Tuesday to more graphic evidence of sectarian violence in the SAG ranks, with namecalling, dogma and even allegations of brainwashing feeding the union's race to strike-fueled self-destruction.

A-List Faction Kindly Asks SAG Not to Totally Destroy Hollywood

A sturdy cross-section of topline Hollywood talent from Tom Hanks to George Clooney to René Auberjonois today urged SAG leadership to back down from its '09 strike threat. Maybe even more noteworthy: Who's missing?

SAG Schedules Strike D-Day for Jan. 2

"Happy 2009 — let's take the year off," will come the refrain from SAG HQ next month, as they today announced Jan. 2 as the date strike authorization ballots go out to its 120,000 members.

Dear SAG: Strike Away! Love, NBC

So SAG's fucked. Wait—did we say "fucked?" There we go again—needless doomsday prophesying where Obaman cool-headedness is clearly required. What we meant to say is: "SAG's probably fucked." Yesterday brought a confluence of Pop Culture Doomsday events that not even a walrus blowing like Bird could have foretold:

SAG Vs. Studios Getting Nearly As Ugly As Waxman Vs. Finke

Just days after we learned the kinda-sorta true details of a secret summit called by SAG president Alan Rosenberg and attended by the A-list dons of Hollywood's acting Cosa Nostra, tensions between the union and producers have reached a rolling boil. With 120,000 strike-authorization ballots being readied for mailing—each sealed individually by the scarred, arid tongue of Rosenberg himself—both sides have issued blistering written attacks accusing the other of the kind of selfishness typically associated with junket reporters asking innocuous questions of Philip Seymour Hoffman. First came a Rosenberg-penned missive on Thanksgiving eve, in which the blustery thespians' rights crusader rebuked producers for relying on that old "there's a gigantic recession coming" excuse:

Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty Implicated in A-List SAG Strike Warm-Up: UPDATE

Just when we thought nothing much had changed in the narcoleptic parallel universe of SAG contract negotiations, we're hearing now that the union's saber-rattlers are finally bringing the heavy weaponry to bear on their studio nemeses: A recent dinner hosting Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty and other influential legends reportedly gave the blessing for a crippling actor's strike. (UPDATE: Not at this meeting, anyway — Sharon Waxman has retracted her original story. More after the jump.) More »

Helen Mirren's House Of Ill-Repute

· Taylor Hackford is shopping around Love Ranch—a brothel drama starring wife Helen Mirren (oooh!) and Joe Pesci (ewww!)—to studios in search of a distribution partner. [Variety] More »

A Slow Burn. Time now to check in on how those pesky, protracted SAG talks are going. Hey, News Corp. president Peter Chernin—what's the latest? He told a conference in New York today that talks are going "horribly," and a strike would be "devastating to the creative community...I think it's genuinely foolhardy to think this is an appropriate time for actors to go out on strike." We doubt union blowhard Alan Rosenberg is going to sit idly for long. Look for the the remainder of the SAG strike campaign funds to be blown on a skywriting campaign announcing "CHERNIN CAN SUCK ME" above Fox headquarters [TV Week]

Unruly WGA Mob Protest 'Project Runway' Rodeo Drive Shoot

A Defamer operative going about his daily Rodeo Drive chores let us know about a standoff that went down this morning between the forces of good (underpaid and undervalued reality show writer-producers) and evil (Heidi Klum, and anything—sorry Tim Gunn fans!—Heidi Klum-adjacent). He writes: More »

SAG Insurrection Introduces Brave New Levels of Seething Internecine Hatred

In a savage coup of upstart infidels, the Unite for Strength ticket outlasted incumbent Alan Rosenberg's MembershipFirst slate in Thursday's SAG board election, thus opening a new era of moderation, peace and progress in Hollywood's rancorous labor wars. Or... not. Maybe? It's too soon to tell, frankly, with new leadership including Amy Brenneman, Scott Bakula, Adam Arkin, '05 loser Morgan Fairchild and Assaf "Brother of Sacha Baron" Cohen making up only a theoretical majority at best; studio-friendly Variety says the SAG/AMPTP squabble's days are numbered, union flunky Nikki Finke says that's "simpleton" piffle, and here in the middle, we can't help but notice that SAG's contract-negotiating team isn't changing at all. Still, we look to the future with cautious optimism perhaps best evoked by Rosenberg's concession on Thursday: More »

SAG is Not Afraid of '90210' or the Rest of Those Dirty AFTRA Freaks

Variety reminds us today that a major! labor! crisis! remains in effect at the Screen Actors Guild, which after three months has still made exactly no progress in settling its contract quibbles with the networks and major studios. Still, if those producers aren't worried, then you shouldn't be either — especially now that AFTRA is reportedly taking over where SAG can't necessarily be counted on. To wit, after securing its own three-year deal with the majors over the summer, the union has nabbed some high-profile new recruits for the primetime season to come. More »

'Mad Men' Gives AMC Gains In Attractive 'Anyone Watching At All' Demo

· Mad Men's second season opened to a strong start for AMC, pulling in 1.9 million aspiring womanizers and the pregnant secretaries who love them. [Variety] More »

The Chrome Knight Returns

· The rumors are true! Darren Aronofsky will write and direct a sequel to RoboCop for MGM, with both parties hoping they can score a piece of this guy-in-a-stupid-costume-noir mania currently gripping the planet. [Variety] More »

Bloody SAG Coup Could Result In Banana Actor Republic

With the studios' post-final-offer, post-AFTRA-vote concession of $10 million in pay raises to SAG still having failed to bring the two sides together in a starry-eyed embrace, nervous Guild delegates are beginning to wonder if their president Alan Rosenberg—"The kind of guy that would trade heated words with his own clown mother, if it meant pushing his resolutions through!" whispered some—is really the man for the job. Now, a small resistance has sprouted from inside; calling themselves United for Strength, the celebrity freedom fighters spend all night mimeographing manifestos in the basement of a Fairfax Ave. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. From the LAT: More »

Hellos and Goodbyes

· Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno exploits took him from Israel to Arkansas; his Sherlock Holmes adventures to come may or may not include the missus. More »

Majors' 'Final Offer' Includes 10 Million New Reasons For SAG to Reject It

It's not quadrupled DVD residuals, regular cocaine rations and guaranteed work for all. However, the major studios' new concession to SAG — $10 million worth of new pay raises — is exactly what we thought might happen after SAG bludgeoned nearly 38% of AFTRA voters into opposing its primetime contract. The deal was ratified anyway, but the majors aren't taking any chances, notes Variety: More »

Strike Fears Allayed, SAG/AFTRA Now Just in It For the Slap Fights

The nuclear labor plume at left is presented a little closer to actual size this morning, the start of the first full day without the specter of strike hell exhaling waves of rancid breath over Hollywood. Not that AFTRA's ratification of its prime-time contract Monday evening vanquishes the SAG threat altogether; the 62.4% tally in favor of AFTRA's deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers suggests that while a strike vote might fail, SAG leadership convinced probably upwards of 10,000 AFTRA members to stand down in the pitched battle between unions. More »

Robert De Niro Calls Out SAG Leadership In Terrifying, Apostrophe-Free Missive

It's time to break out your SAG vs AFTRA Celebrity Turf War Map™ for an update, albeit a bit of a confusing one: Robert De Niro is the latest star to come out in opposition of a SAG strike, asserting during a press conference Saturday at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival that Hollywood has suffered enough bloodshed this year in the bargaining trenches to implode once more over residuals: More »

SAG Asks For More Time To Consider The Deal They've Already Decided They Hate

With the Hollywood StrikeWatch 2: The Actoring doomsday clock clicking into overtime, Team SAGgy (Jack! Rainn! Ben!) has reportedly asked for more time to analyze the AMPTP "final offer" they've already gone on record as saying they really, really, really hate. Team ACTRAvision (Tom! Alec! Susan!), meanwhile, are set to vote in the virtually identical contract offered their guild, the results of which will be announced Tuesday. From THR: More »

Your SAG Vs. AFTRA Celebrity Turf War Map

You could slog, like we did, through Variety's mind-numbing accounting of which actors sided with the AFTRA agreement reached several weeks ago, which are aligning themselves with the cantankerously unbending SAG, and why. But wouldn't it be easier just to look at their accompanying Venn diagram, and get some instant bearings on where your favorite stars' guild loyalties lie? To spice things up, you can also pit the two sides in a variety of competitive scenarios far sexier than squabbling over pension and health contributions and terms. Which side would win a beach volleyball tournament? A kill-or-be-killed island survival week? A dance-off? A bathing-suit pageant? (George Clooney can either be applied to both teams, or neither. Peter Bart can only participate inasmuch as he likens any particularly satisfying victories to famous U.S. wartime battles.) Have fun! More »

Potential SAG Strike Causes Blog Baby Peter Bart To Invoke Godwin's Law Of Nazi Analogism

We'll admit we've been avoiding addressing the big, white, internet-clip-consent-seeking elephant in the room, so let's just get this out of the way: Today is Tuesday, July 1, 2008. Ring any bells? Yes, it's Canada Day, but the celebration of the day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec fused into one maple-syrup-slurping nation isn't important right now. Rather, today is SAG-contract-expiration day. The AMPTP made their final offer—"worth more than $250 million" said they—and lusciously coiffed SAG-head Alan Rosenberg announced the union would be taking the day to look at all 43 of its sumptuous, residuals-detailing pages. Some characterize the mood as calm—perhaps "eerily calm," suggests the NY Times, as not a single network executive has doused themselves in gasoline and lowered a lit Zippo to their heads in slow motion, mouthing, "But weeee were jusssst makinnng gains in Girrrrls 9-15 demooooo..." before erupting into a ball of skin-searing flames. We turn now to blogger newbie Peter Bart for his showbiz veteran's take on the highly precarious situation: More »

From High Atop His Lake Como Villa, George Clooney Preaches Solidarity In Looming SAG Non-Crisis

Like clusters of onlookers awaiting the Vatican smoke signals that announce a new pope, all of Hollywood stirred abuzz today learning that George Clooney would finally weigh in with a letter addressing the conflict between SAG and AFTRA. And weigh in he... didn't, instead choosing a neutral stand essentially saying everyone's right and would they please just sit down and try hammering out something constructive for once? Seriously, folks: More »

Stars Choose Sides as SAG Strike Apocalypse Descends

Everywhere we've been around the LA Film Festival this week, the chatter du jour is either oversexed studio minions or how folks plan to spend their off-days during the increasingly inevitable-looking SAG strike. The latter conflict came into even sharper relief today in Variety, which published a SAG-AFTRA Bullshit Scorecard (hardly an improvement over our SAG Strike Mad Libs™, but whatever) breaking down the lies, celebrity endorsees and various other spin the unions are wielding in their steel-cage labor war: More »

Set-Mule William Hurt Makes The Leap To TV

· Anhedonic The Incredible Hulk star William Hurt brings his unparalleled work ethic to FX's Damages for his first-ever regular TV series role. [Variety] More »

Unencumbered By Boob-Job Drama, George Clooney Mulls His Next Step

· Warner Bros. is developing the spy thriller novel The Tourist as a potential George Clooney vehicle which will explode in the first reel and set the entire plot in motion. What about the goat movie? When does that one come out? [Variety] More »

SAG The Alexis To AFTRA's Krystle

· The 24th day of negotiations brings us no closer to SAG-deal closure, as the actors' union refuses to endorse the AFTRA deal signed last week. (And that despite all the sexy progress AFTRA made in negotiating "online clip consent and jurisdiction over low-budget made-for-Internet productions!") Meanwhile, time is running out for SAG to petition its 120,000 members for strike approval in time for the June 30 deadline. [Variety] More »