SAG-AFTRA and Studios to Continue Strike Talks This Week After Sunday Sees ‘Meaningful Progress’

October 29, 2023 @ 5:25 PM

SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are expected to continue strike talks into this coming week after the actors guild’s negotiating committee and legal representatives from the AMPTP and its member studios continued work on a new contract through the weekend.

Two insiders with knowledge of the Saturday and Sunday talks, which marked four straight days of negotiations for the parties, said that “meaningful progress” was made on actors’ compensation for streaming services, which was said to be the biggest hurdle to a deal, as well as on a compromise on minimum rate increases that are said to be higher than what was negotiated by the AMPTP with the Directors Guild of America and Writers Guild of America.

However, the insiders would not go as far to say that a tentative agreement was imminent, as several other key actor-specific issues still have to be negotiated. Among them are regulations on consent and compensation for AI-generated replicas of performers.

The same insiders confirmed studio CEOs that had previously been present throughout the SAG-AFTRA meetings — Disney’s Bob Iger, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav — were not directly involved with these virtual rounds but were kept informed of developments.

As talks resumed this past week after a nearly two-week suspension, several studios announced delays for major 2024 feature films, as it is expected that they will not be completed in time for their previously scheduled release dates.

Among the films moved are Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible 8,” Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and Pixar’s “Elio,” all of which have been moved to 2025.

Meanwhile, the SAG-AFTRA strike became the subject of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch with Sarah Sherman playing guild president Fran Drescher. The sketch poked fun at the guild’s strike rule ordering members not to wear Halloween costumes from films and TV shows produced by struck studios, a rule that was first put into effect at the start of the strike in July for any social influencer union members attending San Diego Comic-Con.

The sketch also poked at the AMPTP, comparing the union negotiations to trick-or-treating.

“You know how you go to the biggest house on the block, and all the lights are off, and they are pretending that they are not home? But you can see them through the window eating Kit Kat bars, dozens of Kit Kat bars, billions of Kit Kat bars, record numbers of Kit Kat bars. All us actors are saying, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar,” Sherman said.

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