Midnight deadline for new deal as actors' strike looms

The suspense will be thick in Hollywood studios this morning, but it will not be of a welcome Hitchcock variety.

Instead, the film and television community will be bracing for a possible actors' strike, a stoppage that would come on the heels of the walkout by writers at the start of the year.

Ticking by are the final hours of the existing contract between studio owners and SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, and efforts over the last several weeks to negotiate a new one have become deadlocked. If a solution is not negotiated before midnight, all production may be halted.

A strike – or a lock-out of the actors by the studios – is the last thing Tinseltown needs in a year already poisoned by labour unrest. By some estimates, the stoppage by the writers cost Hollywood $2.5bn (£1.25bn) in lost wages and other revenues. A fresh shutdown could disproportionately hit those in the non-acting trades such as scene-builders, stage managers, lighting engineers and make-up artists.

"If you're a below-the-line worker, your blood is probably running cold. They're the ones who took the biggest hit from the writers strike," said Jack Kyser, the chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation.

"Too many people would be put out of work," said Alexandra Leighton, 28, a TV actress who opposes a strike. "It's just not worth it. The economy is already iffy."

Leaders of SAG are pushing the Alliance of Motion of Picture and Television Producers, representing the studio owners, for improved pay conditions, particularly for middle-ranking performers, to reflect new income from DVD residuals and replays on the internet.

But SAG has managed to stage its own mini soap opera within the negotiations, after a minority of its members who simultaneously belong to another smaller union, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said they were ready to accept the offer on the table from the studios. The division has set A-list actors against one another.

"Rather than pitting artist against artist, maybe we could find a way to get what both unions are looking for," George Clooney declared last week in an attempt at playing mediator.

For big screen films, many of which are in the can long before they show up in cinemas, a strike may be only mildly tiresome if it doesn't last too long. However, the stakes are higher for television producers who are getting into high gear to tape shows for the autumn schedules.