🎬 Sean Astin, TIFF winners, and SAG-AFTRA…

The Dailies

Sean Astin at TIFF 2025 (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

🗳️ Sean Astin is SAG-AFTRA's new president. The 'Lord of the Rings' star won the union’s national election with 79% of the vote. He’ll be taking over from Fran Drescher as the 160,000-member union prepares for high-stakes 2026 negotiations with studios. His running mate Michelle Hurd took secretary-treasurer. Interestingly, only 17% of members cast ballots—quite the drop from 26% when Drescher first won in 2021. It's looking like the union's leaning toward collaboration over confrontation going into next year's negotiations. Astin, who served on the negotiating committee during 2023's strikes, is already saying it's in both parties' interest to get a good deal. He plans to start by meeting staff and visiting local chapters.

🏆Chloé Zhao just became the first director to win TIFF's People's Choice Award twice. Her Shakespeare adaptation 'Hamnet' took the audience-voted top prize at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, with Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein' as runner-up and Rian Johnson's latest Knives Out mystery placing third. Zhao previously won in 2020 for 'Nomadland,' which went on to sweep the Oscars. TIFF's track record speaks for itself: 15 of the last 17 People's Choice winners scored Best Picture nominations, and five of those took home the statue. Given that this year's top three finishers are all awards season veterans, the 2026 Oscar race is basically underway. See the full list of TIFF winners here.

💰SAG-AFTRA's "Robin Hood fund" is finally launching after a two-year wait. The streaming revenue-sharing mechanism, officially called the SAG-AFTRA-Producers Success Bonus Distribution Fund, was a marquee win from the 2023 actors' strike but took nearly two years to implement. The fund distributes money from successful streaming shows to performers beyond A-listers, marking the first time background actors, stand-ins, and stunt riggers will receive backend payments. Initially the fund was pitched as industry-wide wealth redistribution, but the final version is more targeted: payments go to performers on successful shows rather than a general union pool. Drescher called it "the last puzzle piece" of her tenure as she exits the union presidency.

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