Negotiations Ongoing as SAG Fights for Better Contract
By Movieguide® Contributor
SAG and AMPTP finished a full week of negotiations and plan to continue next week as the two sides work to hammer out a deal and bring the entertainment industry back to full force.
“SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP met for a full day bargaining session and have concluded,” the two sides said in a joint statement earlier this week. “Negotiations will continue Friday, October 6, with the parties working internally over the weekend, resuming Monday, October 9.”
While the actors’ union has met with the AMPTP at other times during the strike, this one is different—and a more sincere effort—as top CEOs sit down for multi-day talks.
Specifically, this week, NBCUniversals’s Donna Langley, Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Disney’s Bob Iger joined with SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and SAG-AFTRA’s Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez.
“This is senior people sitting down together and the deliberations are going well,” said an industry insider of the negotiations. “Everyone is conducting themselves calmly.”
While the talks are taking place in earnest, the major roadblock appears to be disagreements about residual pay on streaming sites. The actors are asking for 2% of the profit on successful shows, while the AMPTP holds that this is an unreasonable and impossible request.
Furthermore, the question of AI looms as SAG seeks to protect its members from being replaced with AI characters.
Crabtree-Ireland shared his concerns about AI’s potential impact on actors.
“If an individual decided to infringe on one of these companies’ copyright-protected content, and distributed it without paying for the licensing rights, that individual would face a great deal of financial and legal ramifications,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “Shouldn’t the individuals whose intellectual property was used to train the AI algorithm at least be equally protected?”
Despite these major grievances still to be resolved, the actors’ strike will likely be resolved soon as newly written scripts begin to come together after the writers return to work. As these scripts roll in, the studios will feel more pressure to end the actors’ strike and get everybody back to work.
Movieguide® previously reported:
SAG actors have renewed energy after the studios’ deal with writers shows that they are willing to work with their demands.
“It definitely gave me hope,” actor Ernie Hudson said about the WGA deal. “It gave me encouragement that the execs are at least willing to try.”
The AMPTP and SAG began renegotiations earlier this week. A joint memo from the unions stated that “several executives from AMPTP member companies will be in attendance.”
This is good news for actors hoping to return to work as studio executives attended meetings with WGA negotiators shortly before their deal was cut, suggesting a deal with the actors may be close.
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