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Prince Royal, an actor in Los Angeles, was working as an extra on “The Flash” when he was directed to a tractor trailer to “take pictures.”

Inside were hundreds of cameras. He stood with his arms up as the operators took a 3-D scan, which he was told would be used for continuity and special effects.

“We were told if we didn’t do it, we’d be sent home without pay,” he said.

Now he feels like he was duped.

“We don’t know what all our scans are being used for,” he said. “They could possibly use our scans in other movies and other shows.”

That fear is one of the flash points of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator, has warned that studios want to scan background actors and then use artificial intelligence to place those actors in other projects “for the rest of eternity” without consent.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher will be doing a tour of Hollywood picket lines tomorrow morning, after her rousing speech saying they were victimized by the AMPTP, which she called a “very greedy entity” and that the studios were on the wrong side of history.

But despite not officially joining the picket lines for their own strike until tomorrow, there were plenty of actors out in force, as they have been for all 73 days of the writers strike.

The Afterparty star Ike Barinholtz, who has been outside Paramount for much of the strike, was walking the like with Michael McDonald, who was on Madtv and has recently appeared in What We Do In The Shadows and How I Met Your Father.

“We’re triply angry, we’ve triple had it up to here. We’re excited SAG is going to start coming out and show some solidarity,” Barinholtz told Deadline.

Fran Drescher claimed victory in her race for president of SAG-AFTRA on Thursday night, and vowed to lock arms with her fellow union members and “rise up out of the melee.”

Easier said than done.

Drescher takes charge of a union that is famously fractious, and more divided than it has been in recent years.

Even as the star of “The Nanny” defeated Matthew Modine by a narrow margin, Modine’s dissident faction — Membership First — gained seats on the national board, took overwhelming control of the Los Angeles local, and won the election for national secretary-treasurer, the third-ranking post in the union.

Drescher’s party — Unite for Strength — will still command a majority on the national board, observers say. And as president, Drescher will decide who serves on which committee — including the committee that will negotiate the union’s next TV/Theatrical contract in 2023.

But the gains made by Membership...

As SAG-AFTRA’s two factions threaten to fracture the guild further – now they’re threatening to see each other – independent presidential candidate Jane Austin has embarked on a campaign to unify the 160,000-member union in advance of next year’s negotiations for a new film and TV contract.

Saying that “the two-party slate system represents an antiquated system that no longer effectively serves the interests of the membership,” Austin now is rolling out her endorsements for board candidates from both parties – incumbent president Gabrielle Carteris’ Unite for Strength slate and challenger Matthew Modine’s Membership First opposition slate. Austin, currently the guild’s national secretary-treasurer, was elected to that post two years ago on the Membership First slate.

“Based on the board candidates’ statements, and my experience working with them, I’ve chosen to support these specific candidates no matter what slate they’re on because I know...

SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris and seven of her supporters are threatening to file a lawsuit against their opponents over recent allegations of misconduct by Carteris.

United Screen Actors Nationwide, which endorses Carteris, issued the threat Thursday against presidential challenger Matthew Modine and 19 of his allies running on the Membership First slate, including Ed Asner, Diane Ladd, Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Martin Sheen.

Pamela Jeffrey of the New York firm of Levy Ratner wrote a cease-and-desist letter in response to a July 29 threat from attorney Robert Allen to file a lawsuit on behalf of unnamed members if Carteris was not removed from the ballot. Allen accused Carteris of allegedly using insider information to take credit for SAG-aftra’s new deal with Netflix and alleged that she has been using union resources to promote her candidacy via official SAG-aftra videos.

Jeffrey called the allegations baseless and accused the 20 members — many...

SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris and members of her slate are fighting back against Matthew Modine and his slate’s threat of a “frivolous” lawsuit over her alleged use of guild resources, including “insider and highly confidential information,” to advance her candidacy — a claim she vehemently denies. Modine’s team even demanded that Carteris be removed from the ballot in the upcoming election.

In a letter to Modine and his team, Pamela Jeffrey, an attorney representing Carteris and her slate, wrote:

“Our clients demand that you immediately cease and desist from using costly litigation at the expense of SAG-aftra and its members as a tool to advance your own personal political agenda,” wrote “If you do not publicly retract or disavow in writing the threat of a frivolous and unwarranted lawsuit and other demands, my clients have informed me that they will consider other appropriate action to protect the...

Membership First, the “loyal opposition” at SAG-AFTRA, has unveiled its slate of candidates in the upcoming elections. Patricia Richardson is running for president of the guild’s Los Angeles local, and Frances Fisher and David Jolliffe are vying for two local vice president slots. As previously reported, Matthew Modine heads the slate in his bid to unseat Gabrielle Carteris as president of SAG-aftra, and Jodi Long is running for national secretary-treasurer.

Richardson, who is the La local’s first vp, was defeated by incumbent Ken Howard four years ago in the race for president of the 160,000-member union — “We have the largest local, half the union’s members,” Richardson said in her campaign statement. “Our building, doubling as national headquarters and our home, now a construction site rented at $6,000,000 a year, is inadequate for our needs. We still have to rent other spaces for any large meetings. Thanks to Membership First,...

Exclusive: Veteran stuntman Conrad Palmisano has been named to replace Stephen Collins on the SAG-aftra national board of directors. Collins resigned from the board in October after an audio tape surfaced that purports to be his voice confessing to having had sexual contact with children.

The union’s board replacement committee recommended Palmisano for the post, and the national board voted unanimously for him to finish out the rest of Collins’ term, which expires in 2017.

Palmisano is a familiar face at the guild’s offices, having served on the SAG board, on and off, since the 1970s. He co-chaired the SAG stunt and safety committee for many years. A former president of the Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures, he has more than 200 film and credits as a stuntman and stunt coordinator dating to the early 1970s. He also has dozens of credits as a second-unit director.

Meanwhile, Jeff Austin...

Dark Skies - Weinstein Company - Blu-ray and DVD Director: Scott Stewart Cast: Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, J.K. Simmons, Ron Ostrow. Full cast + crew Dark Skies got kind of a bum deal here in the States. It was basically sold as a haunted house movie, but with something that wasn't your average ghost. It also wasn't screened for press, which tends to be a sign that the studio isn't confident in its movie. As I wrote when it hit theaters, it deserved more than that. Scott Stewart's latest film is the best of his career, and while that still may not make it the finest horror movie of the year, it's still an above average family-in-peril movie with some cool, memorable ideas and more than enough freaky...

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Stars: Keri Russell, Jake Brennan, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett, J.K. Simmons, L.J. Benet, Myndy Crist, Annie Thurman, Ron Ostrow | Written and Directed by Scott Stewart

Modern horror is a little light on big names but one who should certainly be bigger is Jason Blum. He’s not exactly a household name but a man who almost single-handed seems to be responsible for virtually all the theatrically released horror content of the last few years, a man who can count the Paranormal Activity films, the Insidious (soon to be) franchise, last year’s well received Sinister and even Barry Levinson’s eco-horror The Bay among his successes. While not all of his films hit (the forthcoming Lords of Salem appears to have attained anti-buzz for instance), he still seems to be a man who takes horror seriously and seems to see it as much as a legitimate genre as...

Television shows based around sports have always been a bit of an enigma to me. While I appreciate the need to represent the theme of athleticism on TV it seemed the audience for such a show would be tuning into other programming. That would be actual sporting events, specifically.

This obviously put a series like Sports Night in a difficult predicament. The perceived core demographic is either out playing sports, or watching it on TV (instead of this show) and the remaining viewing audience thinks they need to be sports fans to understand the content. Even with a tagline of, “It’s about Sports. The same way Charlie’s Angels was about law enforcement.” the inherent misperception of who Sports Night was trying to capture as an audience is the most likely reason the series lasted only two seasons.

Trust me when I say, this may have been one of...

Last night, there was a panel in La entitled How Will Labor Discord Change Hollywood? A story about the panel and video of the event are available here.

The panel focused on Hollywood labor issues related to new media. Sponsored by Zocalo and moderated by La Times Editorial Board Member Jon Healey, panelists included AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgepeth, actress Kathryn Joosten, actor Ron Ostrow, UCLA Law professor David Ginsburg, Veoh Founder and Chief Innovation Officer Dmitry Shapiro, and TroyGould entertainment attorney Jonathan Handel.

Tomorrow, Monday, Feb. 23, there will be a panel in La entitled How Will Labor Discord Change Hollywood? The panel will focus on Hollywood labor issues related to new media.

Sponsored by Zocalo and moderated by La Times Editorial Board Member Jon Healey, panelists include AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgepeth, actress Kathryn Joosten, actor Ron Ostrow, UCLA Law professor David Ginsburg, Veoh Founder and Chief Innovation Officer Dmitry Shapiro, and TroyGould entertainment attorney Jonathan Handel.

The panel starts at 7:30 at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks, 15301 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403. For info and reservations, visit http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/lectureseries.php?event_id=168.