Barbie, Ken and Wednesday Addams costumes are out. Ghosts and zombies are in.
Halloween this yr is difficult for actors on strike, underneath new union guidelines that inform them tips on how to keep away from crossing the digital picket line: Don’t costume as characters from main studio productions or publish pictures of the costumes on-line.
“Let’s use our collective energy to ship a loud and clear message to our struck employers that we’ll not promote their content material and not using a honest contract,” the union, SAG-AFTRA, stated within the tips on Thursday.
The union urged its members to “rejoice Halloween this yr whereas additionally staying in solidarity.”
SAG-AFTRA, representing greater than 150,000 tv and film actors, has been on strike since July whereas it negotiates a contract with the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers, which represents main movie and streaming companies together with Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros.
Usually, the union encourages striking members to share pictures of their union engagement and the picket line as a way to amplify their calls for, which embody elevated residual funds from streaming providers, a wage increase and protections concerning using synthetic intelligence. However SAG-AFTRA stated its Halloween tips have been meant “to verify our members don’t inadvertently break strike guidelines.”
The rules urge members to decide on generic costumes — of zombies, spiders or ghosts, say — or to base their costumes on characters from animated tv reveals.
In its protection of the brand new tips on Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter highlighted some of the rules’ technicalities. For instance, a dressing up primarily based on Barbie, which is owned by Mattel, might recommend that the wearer was selling the summer time’s largest film from a significant studio.
“Presumably, actors might costume up like struck characters in the event that they weren’t seen publicly of their costumes, but it surely’s in all probability finest to not danger it — in spite of everything, nothing is scarier than getting known as out for scabbing,” the publication wrote, utilizing the slang time period for somebody who disregards a strike.
Social media pictures of costumes impressed by content material coated by the strike may very well be thought-about publicity work, in response to the union. It was not clear how actors would deal with dressing up as Barbie or J. Robert Oppenheimer at occasions that will not be publicized or whether or not actors would affect the costume selections of their relations.
“I look ahead to screaming ‘scab’ at my 8 yr outdated all night time. She’s not within the union however she must study,” the actor Ryan Reynolds stated in a joking post on X, the platform previously often known as Twitter.
John Rocha, a union actor and the co-host of “The Hot Mic,” a movie overview podcast, known as the choice “silly” and stated he hoped that SAG-AFTRA would reverse course.
“Partying at Halloween dressed because the characters their fellow SAG actors dropped at life (whereas they blow off some steam) needs to be ENCOURAGED,” he said on X.
Negotiations between the leisure studios and the union collapsed final week, with either side saying they remained far aside on probably the most vital points.
