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After over a week of silence, the actors union and the AMPTP are set to return to negotiations on Oct. 24.
“SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP will meet for bargaining on Tuesday, October 24 at SAG-AFTRA Plaza. Several executives from AMPTP member companies will be in attendance,” read a statement today from SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP.
While SAG-AFTRA says that it was the studios who left the table back on Oct. 11, SAG-AFTRA Chief Negotiator and National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline Thursday that he remained “optimistic” that both sides would sit across the table soon.
Said Crabtree-Ireland, “I did not expect [negotiations] would have to go so long,” he continued. “The amount of time spent without negotiating has been completely unconscionable. The studios and streamers ought to be back at the table with us now. They should have been there the first 80 days but they weren’t. I am very eager to see that happen and I believe it will happen soon. I think there’s a lot of pressure happening outside of formal channels to get people back to the table, so I’m optimistic that that will happen sometime soon. But I know that we’re just going to stand strong and get a fair deal.”
Talks broke apart on Oct. 11 with SAG-AFTRA proposing a 75 cents per subscriber annual charge in a revenue share plan with the studios. The next day at a Bloomberg conference, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos called such a charge a “levy on subscribers on top of [other] areas” as well as a “bridge too far”. SAG-AFTRA Chief Negotiator and National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland slammed Sarandos’ statement as “preposterous” in an interview with Deadline last Saturday. The studios balked at the guild’s ask saying in a public statement that it was an “untenable economic burden” which would cost them more than $2.4 billion over the course of a new three-year contract or more than $800 million per year. SAG-AFTRA responded by saying that the studios “intentionally misrepresented to the press the cost of the above proposal – overstating it by 60%.
On Tuesday, Hollywood’s biggest stars gathered on a Zoom call with SAG-AFTRA leaders, pledging to commit $150 million over three years to remove a cap on union dues to bring more coin to guild coffers, and suggesting a streamer residual structure that would put actors on the bottom of the call sheet before them. The hope was that getting money faster would help more struggling actors qualify for benefits.
Deadline told you first that the roster of thespians included George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Kerry Washington, Tyler Perry, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Aniston, Robert De Niro, Ben Affleck, Laura Dern, Emma Stone, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Reynolds, and Ariana DeBose.
However, union leader Fran Drescher later said that such a move would be incompatible with the contract that SAG-AFTRA was attempting to negotiate.
The Clooney offer “does not impact the contract that we’re striking over whatsoever,” said Drescher on Instagram Thursday night.
“I also want to thank George Clooney for organizing the suggestion that… take the caps off of the dues so that the highest paid members can contribute more. Although that’s extremely generous and we accept that graciously.”
Drescher outlined why the proposal wouldn’t work.
“We are a federally regulated labor union and the only contributions that can go into our pension and health funds must be from the employer. So what we are fighting for in terms of benefits has to remain in this contract.”
“SAG-AFTRA members have been systematically squeezed out of their ability to make a living due to a streaming model that reduces the number of episodes in a season by two-thirds and the number of seasons by two-thirds, while completely cutting off the syndication tail,” Drescher said in an exclusive open letter on Deadline today, on the guild’s 100th day of the strike.
She added, “This dramatic compression of work opportunities coupled with inadequate compensation has had a devastating effect on the working actors and journeyman actors who bring movies and television shows to life. It has compromised their ability to pay their rent, put food on the table and clothes on their children’s backs.”
Together with the WGA strike, which ended on Sept. 27, the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike has cost the California economy $5 billion. Additionally per Labor statistics, 45K jobs have been lost with the fall box office off near $400M from the pre-pandemic 2019 frame from post Labor Day onward.
While writers rooms have began, the start of the new season hangs in limbo. A January 2024 telecast was hoped for by studios as they reached a deal with scribes, pinning their hopes that the actors would immediately find their way to a contract. That has not happened as SAG-AFTRA has held firm to getting better terms on streaming residuals/revenue share and actors rights in regards to their use by AI.
Also bound to be collateral damage as part of the strike is the theatrical release calendar. After cinemas, with the help of the U.S. government, were able to scrape by after being shuttered for close to a year due to Covid, the box office boomed back, but not to pre-pandemic $11 billion domestic levels. With big studio Hollywood films shut down worldwide, that will indeed force the majors to delay movies, leaving gaps on the release calendar, and leaving the debt-laden exhibition pipeline in dire straits. Deadline told you first that Marvel Studios’ Deadpool 3, which is only half completed, won’t meet its May 3 start-of-summer release date even if the strike wraps in the near future.
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