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SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers concluded their second day of renewed talks on a new three-year contract with a plan to meet again on Friday and even further.
“SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP met for a full-day bargaining session and concluded,” the parties said in a joint statement tonight. He added, “The negotiations will continue on Friday, October 6, with the parties working internally over the weekend, and will resume on Monday, October 9.”
As they did on Monday, SAG-AFTRA leadership sat down with studio executives and AMPTP President Carole Lombardi on Wednesday to move forward with ending the actors’ strike, which reaches its 85th day tomorrow. Talks started late today, a source told us.
“The senior officials are sitting together and the deliberations are going well,” a person familiar with Wednesday’s negotiations said. “Everyone is acting calm.”
As is now clear in their statement, the two parties plan to meet again at SAG-AFTRA headquarters on Miracle Mile on Friday, with the Gang of Four CEO expected to attend.
This sitting will be followed by deliberations between the directors themselves over the weekend and the resumption of formal talks between the two sides on October 9 – the same day the WGA’s vote to ratify their tentative agreement with the studios ends. After nearly five months of strike action and five days late last month of final negotiations, that vote is widely expected to be approved by an overwhelming majority of clerks.
While the two sides are still negotiating many issues, SAG-AFTRA’s revenue-sharing proposal continues to prove a difficult challenge in this latest round of talks. As has happened since the first round of negotiations between the two parties in July, the actors union wants actors of successful live shows to receive 2% of profits. As they have done since this summer and consistently since the SAG-AFTRA strike on July 14, AMPTP rejected the proposal due to disagreement over analytics, rics, and their handling of broadcasting’s overall business model.
Similar to Monday, attendees today at SAG-AFTRA headquarters in Wilshire included Gang of Four CEOs — NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley, Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, and Disney’s Bob Iger — as well as Lombardini, the national executive. for SAG-AFTRA and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, and longtime SAG-AFTRA chief contract officer Ray Rodriguez.
As members once again took to the picket lines today, SAG-AFTRA on Tuesday afternoon posted a message from Crabtree-Ireland, the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee, strike captains and cutting coordinators at the Warner Bros. Yards in Burbank, California to celebrate the return. for the talks and that the union is a “strong SAG-AFTRA”.
“We will bring this home,” Crabtree-Ireland said in the post, while urging members to continue with sit-ins and solidarity events.
Earlier today, SAG-AFTRA said Crabtree-Ireland will travel to New York Comic Con to participate in the October 14 episode “Artificial Intelligence in Entertainment: A Performer’s Perspective,” which will cover how existing legal structures are being used in some areas and how standards should be built. New for performers and producers to collaborate while continuing to protect individual rights to performance and publicity.
Crabtree-Ireland will discuss how SAG-AFTRA handled the issue, the laws surrounding the technology, its role in the current strike and the recent vote to authorize a strike on the Interactive Media Agreement covering members’ work in video games.
The NYCC will undoubtedly pick up on some of the statements Crabtree-Ireland made Tuesday at an FTC hearing on artificial intelligence. The FTC last month described it as a “virtual roundtable discussion,” and Wednesday’s hearing heard DCI criticize what it called a “double standard” for tech companies. After sitting out of talks with AMPTP Today for a while, Crabtree-Ireland pointed out the contradiction that exists in companies that don’t hesitate to troll the intellectual property for AI algorithm training, but would certainly balk if something similar was done to them and their content.
The union official returned to in-person talks in Los Angeles after his remarks before the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday.
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