In groundbreaking news across the film and television industry, Hollywood actors will join screenwriters in historic strike action after the national board of the SAG-AFTRA union approved a member walkout.

Major films in production look set to be affected by the strike, as well as promotional events such as red-carpet premieres. Additionally, events including the Emmys and Comic-Con are likely to be rescheduled or scaled back.

In the industry’s biggest shutdown for over 60 years, some 160,000 performers stopped work at midnight in Los Angeles.

The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since early May. Both groups want streaming giants like Netflix to agree to a fairer split of profits and better working conditions.

Additionally, the two organisations also want to protect actors from being usurped by digital replicas through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer-generated faces and voices.

While the strike lasts, actors cannot appear in films or even promote ones that they have already made.

SAG president Fran Drescher, the former star of the hit 90s sitcom The Nanny, caught public attention yesterday with a fiery speech in which she accused executives of streaming giants of making “Wall Street and greed their priority” while ignoring the “essential contributors that make the machine run”.

A number of high-profile Hollywood stars have offered their support for the strike, including Oscar-winning actors George Clooney, Jessica Chastain, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

As things stand, major films that are set to be affected by the strike include sequels to Avatar and Gladiator as well as Deadpool 3, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice follow-up, and the film adaptation of the musical Wicked.

On the television side of things, the second series of HBO’s House of the Dragon and FOX comedies Family Guy and The Simpsons are also facing production trouble.

Further news on the strike action will be announced in due course.