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2023: A Hollywood Labor Odyssey

What did we learn from a tumultuous 2023? As an extraordinarily challenged year sunsets, here are five takeaways.

SAG-AFTRA members chant outside Paramount Studios on day 118 of their strike against the Hollywood studios on November 8, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
The evidence was everywhere, but the entertainment C.E.O.s ignored it: Labor in Hollywood—and across the U.S.—is on the move. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Jonathan Handel
December 22, 2023

By late 2022, the Writers Guild strike of 2007-08 and the SAG stalemate of 2008-09 were but fading memories for those who remembered them at all—and the dual writers-actors strikes of 1959-60 were sepia-toned history, known to only a few. Then came last December, when the Directors Guild failed to reach a deal on its usual early schedule, and the industry awakened to what became its most turbulent year in a generation. Now that 2023’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are over, we can ask, What just happened? Herewith, five key answers.