Saturday, after two days of talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) said they would be seeking a strike authorization, since the meetings with the AMPTP had been to no avail.

SAG, which represents 120,000 film and television actors throughout the United States, revealed that the Hollywood studios had put forward terms that they would by no means agree to, therefore they would be asking the members’ vote for the strike authorization.

In its turn, the AMPTP informed that it had reached similar with agreements within this year with guilds for directors, writers and a separate performers' union, adding that the SAG’s decision to conduct the referendum was completely inappropriate given the economic crisis.

The main discussion points that the talks between the two institutions focused on were on the matter of which Internet film and television projects SAG contracts would cover, as well as on that of how much actors would be paid for over the Web delivered content.

In order to achieve the strike authorization,  SAG needs to get 75 percent approval from voting members, but industry watchers have stated that it was unlikely that the necessary favourable to the strike votes would be cast, given the aftermaths of the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The latter halted work for a number of 14 weeks and also cost Los Angeles’ economy an estimated $3 billion, which would probably render SAG members reluctant to authorize the strike, for fear it should entail similar consequences.