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SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers just completed their second day of renewed talks on a new three-year contract and plan to meet again on Friday and later.
“SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP met for a day-long negotiating session and reached a conclusion,” the parties said in a joint statement this evening. “Negotiations will continue on Friday, October 6th, with the parties working internally over the weekend and will resume on Monday, October 9th.”
As on Monday, SAG-AFTRA leadership sat down with studio CEOs and AMPTP head Carol Lombardi on Wednesday to push for an end to the actors’ strike, which will reach its 85th day tomorrow. The talks started late today, a source told us.
“High-ranking people are sitting together here and the discussions are going well,” said an industry insider about the negotiations on Wednesday. “Everyone stays quiet.”
As their statement just made clear, the parties intend to meet again on Friday at the SAG-AFTRA headquarters on Miracle Mile, with CEO Gang of Four expected to be in attendance
This meeting will be followed by consultations between the respective directors over the weekend and a resumption of formal discussions between the two sides on October 9th – the same day that the WGA’s vote to ratify its tentative agreement with the studios ends. After nearly five months of strikes and five days of final negotiations last month, this vote is widely expected to pass with an overwhelming majority of critics
While the sides are still negotiating on several issues, SAG-AFTRA’s revenue-sharing proposal has continued to prove a difficult challenge in this latest round of talks. As has been the case since the parties’ first negotiations in July, the actors’ guild wants the actors of successful streaming shows to receive 2% of the profits. As has been the case since this summer and since the SAG-AFTRA strike on July 14, the AMPTP rejected the proposal based on different analysis, tricks and their view of the entire streaming business model.
Similar to Monday, those at SAG-AFTRA’s Wilshire headquarters today included CEO Gang of Four – NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley, Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Disney’s Bob Iger – as well as national executive Lombardini Director of SAG-AFTRA, present chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and Ray Rodriguez, long-time chief contracts officer of SAG-AFTRA.
With members back on the picket lines today, SAG-AFTRA released a message Tuesday afternoon from Crabtree-Ireland, the TV/Theater Bargaining Committee, strike leaders and plot coordinators at the Warner Bros. picket lines in Burbank, Calif., urging the return to celebrate for talks and that the union is “SAG-AFTRA strong”.
“We will bring this home,” Crabtree-Ireland said in the post, urging members to continue picketing and solidarity events.
SAG-AFTRA said today that Crabtree-Ireland will travel to New York Comic Con to participate in the panel discussion “AI in Entertainment: The Performer’s Perspective” on October 14, which will explore how existing legal structures can be used in some areas and how new standards need to be created for collaboration between artists and producers, while protecting individual performance and advertising rights.
Crabtree-Ireland will discuss how SAG-AFTRA is addressing the issue, the laws surrounding the technology and its role in the current strike and the recent strike authorization vote on the Interactive Media Agreement, which covers members’ work on video games.
This NYCC panel will no doubt take up some of the statements Crabtree-Ireland made on AI in a hearing before the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday. The FTC called Wednesday’s meeting last month a “virtual roundtable” in which DCI criticized what it called “double standards” by tech companies. Crabtree-Ireland pulled out of talks with the AMPTP for a while today, pointing to the contradiction in companies that are happy to misuse intellectual property to train AI algorithms but would certainly balk if anything were done to them and their content Something similar would be done.
The union official returned to face-to-face meetings in LA on Wednesday following his remarks to the FTC.