Strike dodged with deal between film and TV crews, studios

By ANDREW DALTON
AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An 11th-hour deal has been reached and a strike that would have shut down film and television productions across the U.S. was averted. The union representing most of the crew members who work on movies and TV shows reached a contract agreement Saturday with the studios who employ them. Disagreements over working conditions prompted the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees to vote to authorize their leaders to call a strike for the first time in the union’s 128-year existence, and a Monday deadline had been set. But it never came to that.