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Negotiators from SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will return to the bargaining table on Monday, Oct. 2, after settling a bitter simultaneous strike led by the Writes Guild of America on Tuesday.
“SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP will resume negotiations on a new TV/theatrical contract on Monday, October 2nd. Several executives from AMPTP member companies will be in attendance,” SAG-AFTRA said in a statement.
SAG-AFTRA negotiator Duncan Crabtree Ireland and union president Fran Drescher are expected to meet with producers with renewed zeal, as the creative community and countless overlapping companies breathed a sigh of relief that the WGA’s 146-day war with the studios and streamers ended on September 26th. Backchanneling between Crabtree Ireland and the four prominent media CEOs who helped broker the WGA deal – Disney’s Bob Iger, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley, Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav and Netflix’s Ted Sarandos – stated immediately after the Authors had reached a tentative agreement: sources said.
AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA have not resumed good faith negotiations since the union, made up of approximately 160,000 members, declared a strike on July 14. The collateral damage has been significant, in some cases to the global box office and certainly to the fall film festival cycle. With star talent forbidden from promoting the work of a “struggling” company, the red carpets in Venice, Telluride and Toronto were ghost towns.
Some lucky film and television projects have been recipients of a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement, allowing productions to move forward or allowing stars to participate in promotion. These films include Michael Mann’s Ferrari, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla and the upcoming Christmas film The Iron Claw starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White.
While Crabtree Ireland and Drescher maintained their desire to get back to the bargaining table, the union was also preoccupied with other strike matters. On Monday, the union voted overwhelmingly to stop work for 10 major video game companies.
“After five rounds of negotiations, it has become abundantly clear that video game companies are unwilling to meaningfully engage on the issues that matter: compensation eroded by inflation, unregulated use of AI and security,” Crabtree Ireland said of the new fight.