THR Illustration / Michael Buckner
After a tense week in which SAG-AFTRA and the Hollywood studios exchanged proposals over a new three-year labor contract, the two sides are expected to meet again this weekend according to a source close to the negotiations, amid the actors’ ongoing strike.
Four top company executives who were present at previous negotiating sessions throughout the week – Bob Iger, Ted Sarandos, Donna Langley and David Zaslav – were not present at Friday’s meeting, at least initially, according to sources the Alliance of Motion Picture and saw Carol Lombardini, president of television producers, leading the discussions on behalf of the industry.
“SAG-AFTRA declines to comment because our negotiations are ongoing and we are strongly focused on negotiating in good faith to ensure a fair deal for SAG-AFTRA members,” a union spokesperson said. also reached out to AMPTP for comment.
Negotiations between labor and management over the new SAG-AFTRA contract resumed Tuesday after a nearly two-week break. That day, Iger, Langley, Sarandos, Zaslav and the AMPTP presented some new ideas to the union, such as adapting a previous performance-based streaming bonus proposal to reward creators behind programs that do well on services like Netflix or Disney+. (The union, on the other hand, had previously advocated for its members to receive a share of the streaming platform’s revenue, and later pushed for a fee per streaming subscriber to be charged instead.)
The studios also offered a larger increase in the pay floor for artists, increasing their previous offer of a 5 percent increase in the first year to a 7 percent increase. (However, this proposal was still several percentage points short of the 11 percent increase that SAG-AFTRA had originally sought.)
After taking a day to consider their options, union negotiators offered their response Thursday, including an adjusted plan to get more streaming compensation for members, a studio source said. The union also lowered its proposal to increase the wage floor from 11 percent to 9 percent. And that night, in a show of support for union leadership, thousands of union members, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Cynthia Nixon, Mark Ruffalo and Demi Moore, signed a letter urging their negotiators “not to back down now.” The letter continued: “As hard as this is, we would rather stay on strike than get a bad deal.”
On the 106th day of the actors’ strike, both sides feel enormous pressure to reconcile. Studios are trying to salvage their 2024 broadcast and theatrical schedules, which have not yet been impacted after months of significant production disruption. Just as the meeting began, Disney announced that due to the ongoing strike and standoff, it would be delaying its two spring releases – Snow White and Pixar’s Elio – for more than a year. Meanwhile, the union faced questions from A-list members eager to hold talks with Hollywood companies to make real progress.
Pamela McClintock contributed to this report.