SAG-AFTRA Documentary in the Works

The filmmakers behind prominent documentaries on casting directors and the #MeToo movement have set their sights on another Hollywood subject: the evolution of the performers’ union SAG-AFTRA.

Director-producer Tom Donahue and producer Ilan Arboleda are working on a film about the transformation of the labor organization union between 2008, when the Writers Guild of America struck film and television studios and the Screen Actors Guild considered (but ultimately did not realize) their own work stoppage, and 2024, in the aftermath of the union’s landmark 118-day actors’ strike. The film will represent the culmination of interviews that have spanned a decade conducted by the filmmakers, whose project will additionally cover the union’s history and its longtime fight to create a middle class of actors, they shared with The Hollywood Reporter.

With two previous projects under their CreativeChaos vmg banner, the filmmaking team has leveraged Hollywood narratives to tell larger stories about social issues in America: 2018’s This Changes Everything explored gender inequality in the workplace, while 2012’s Casting By tackled a female-dominated field that wasn’t as celebrated as other crafts. With this upcoming film, the filmmakers want to use SAG-AFTRA as a means to discuss “the destruction of the middle class in America because of the destruction of the unions in America,” says Donahue.

The filmmakers got to work on the subject in 2011, after the Screen Actors Guild overhauled its leadership in the wake of a failed strike authorization attempt by former president Alan Rosenberg. Arboleda and Donahue began filming interviews with Rosenberg and the leaders of the political faction he was associated with, Membership First, followed by interviews with its rival group, Unite for Strength. The team then “captured the merger as it happened” between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists in 2012, says Arboleda.

The filmmakers put the project on the shelf as they pursued other films, but picked it up again after the 2023 actors’ strike. They plan on documenting how multiple contract negotiation cycles set the stage for the ultimate 118-day work stoppage and the impact that president Fran Drescher had on the union. They also plan on showing how the rise of “new media” (streaming entertainment) changed rates and residuals for performers. Says Arboleda of resuming the project after so many years, “Time is on our side with this, and the amount of time it took was actually almost necessary to be able to see this long-view lens of the problem.”

Drescher and current national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland have agreed to sit for interviews with the filmmakers. Says Drescher in a statement, “SAG-AFTRA’s ‘Hot Labor Summer’ of 2023 is one of the most important chapters in entertainment industry history. This is a critical story that needs to be told.” Adds Crabtree-Ireland, “Our fight for our members inspired workers everywhere and is a story that deserves to be told and amplified in the decades ahead.”

The filmmakers previously logged interviews with former labor leaders Ken Howard, Roberta Reardon and Ed Asner as well as union insiders and observers like Michael Sheen, Amy Aquino, David White, Rebecca Damon, Matthew Kimbrough, David Prindle and former Hollywood Reporter journalist Jonathan Handel, among others. The filmmakers are currently aiming to finish the film in mid-2026.