Ted Sarandos
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Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said talks between SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP collapsed Wednesday over an additional “levy” the actors union wanted to levy on each streaming subscriber.
Sarandos was one of four CEOs, including Bob Iger, David Zaslav and Donna Langley, who participated in negotiations with the Writers Guild of America and recently met with SAG-AFTRA.
At a Bloomberg conference on Thursday, Sarandos said they offered SAG-AFTRA a “performance-based bonus” that was similar to the writers’ deal but cost the studios four to five times more.
“That was rejected and the counterpart was this levy on every subscriber and before that a levy on all revenue where the union basically takes a certain amount of money for every subscriber to a service,” Sarandos said.
“The issue we resolved with the writers was not only written into the deal, but also confirmed by a 99 percent majority of the Writers Guild. So I know that not all of these guilds are created equal and they all have different needs and more individual needs, but like I said, this worked, this rewarded the success that we agreed to. But a levy on top of our revenue or per subscriber, without visibility into revenue per subscriber or anything like that, just seemed like a step too far to take that deep into the negotiations,” Sarandos continued.
The AMPTP announced Wednesday that negotiations between the two parties had been “suspended,” while also saying that “the gap between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA is too great.” In its message, the AMPTP also weighed in on the union’s proposal to give casts a cut of revenue from the streaming platform, calling it “an unsustainable economic burden” that would cost more than $800 million a year.
SAG-AFTRA sent a message to members telling members that the studios had broken off talks with the union and accused them of using “bullying tactics.” “[The studios] “Intentionally misrepresented to the press the costs of the above proposal, overstating them by 60 percent.”
Sarandos added that while he and the other CEOs were at the table during the recent negotiations, all studios were heavily invested in the process. He and others are committed to reaching an agreement as the talks progress, he said. But he said Wednesday night’s talks were “neither stable nor progressive.”
“The four of us sat at the table, but we all delved into it every day and treated it with the same urgency with which we tried to restart production during the COVID-19 crisis.” We understand that a deal has to get done, and the only reason these deals can sometimes take so long is because this is the only deal we’re going to do,” Sarandos said.
“This has obviously been a very difficult time and the aim is to get people back to work. The goal is to open up the city. This hurts not only our industry, but every other company that supports our industry,” he added.
He also said that while he expects content production costs for studios to ultimately increase once a deal is reached, Netflix is not changing its content spending forecasts at this time.
Sarandos also took time to address the Hamas attack on Israel on Saturday, saying that Lior Weitzman, who worked in the sound department of Bros, a Netflix original series in Israel, was killed in the attack after being shot on I was out cycling on Saturday morning. He added that production of this series has been halted.
“We just want to say that our condolences are with Lior and his family and everyone else who may have lost someone in Israel on Saturday,” he said.