Yahoo News Exasperated Producers Say It Louder: We’re Not the AMPTP
On Tuesday morning, a letter signed by over 2,300 film and TV producers was sent to the president of the organization that bargains on behalf of studios and streamers with Hollywood unions, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Its message to AMPTP leader Carol Lombardini: Please remove the word “producers” from your organization’s title.
The letter, a copy of which was shared with The Hollywood Reporter, explained that “the inclusion of ‘Producers’ in your name inaccurately implies that all producers are part of this organization,” and noted that none of the independent producers who signed are members of the AMPTP. The letter continued that while AMPTP member companies “may technically ‘produce’ film and television in the verb definition of the word, the noun producer reflects a job and role on a film and television crew that is not what the AMPTP member companies or their employees do.” (Deadline first reported the petition on Tuesday.)
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The AMPTP negotiates on behalf of hundreds of production companies across dozens of ongoing labor contracts, and is led by eight “Class A” members, which currently include Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Sony, Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Warner Bros. Discovery.
According to letter signatories including Jason Blum (M3GAN), Effie Brown (Dear White People), Nina Jacobson (The Hunger Games), Dede Gardner (She Said), Todd Black (The Equalizer 3) and Stacey Sher (The Hateful Eight), the AMPTP has “unjustly lumped producers into the organization’s positions” and that the negotiations have “led to confusion” and “negatively affect producers in multiple ways beond their control.” THR has asked the AMPTP for comment on the letter.
That independent producers are not a part of the AMPTP is a drum that many in the role have been beating for years amid myriad labor battles, though producers were particularly outspoken about the topic during the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes. The work stoppages, involving tens of thousands of actors and writers, thrust the often-opaque trade organization the AMPTP into the spotlight. Following remarks that Sean Penn made at Cannes Film Festival in May, in which he confused the Producers Guild of America trade organization with the AMPTP, satirically calling the former the “Bankers’ Guild,” PGA presidents Stephanie Allain (Hustle & Flow) and Donald De Line (Ready Player One) clarified the difference between the two organizations in a THR as-told-to guest column. “We’re a collection of individual producers, as opposed to a collection of for-profit companies,” they explained.
Tuesday’s letter, on the other hand, originated with a Change.org petition from the Producers Union, a group of creative fiction film producers that is attempting to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining. Producers, who are largely non-union, do not have one go-to healthcare solution, minimum wage rates or other benefits that are characteristic of organized labor. “We’re not representatives of the struck companies. Most of us don’t have deals with them. Most of us don’t have our bills paid by them. We’re not at the table the negotiations. So we really wanted to start changing that narrative and it’s just slowly taken off,” explains Laura Lewis (Tell Me Lies), a Producers Union executive committee member and one of the organizers of the letter. She adds, “We have just as many issues with those member companies as they [writers and actors] do.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the PGA said, “The Producers Guild supports the efforts of the Producers Union and all producers advocating for the basic rights of producers including fair compensation, access to essential benefits and healthcare.”
The Producers Union, an effort that launched in 2021 amid challenges presented to the profession by the COVID-19 pandemic, has only 100-200 members so far. “The first couple of years were [about] ratifying a constitution and figuring out the legalities of it,” says Lewis. “I would say we’re now in phase two, which is growing the membership and we’re still in early nascent stages of that, but we need numbers in order to get support and that’s the goal.”
So far, the AMPTP has not responded to the letter, according to organizers, and Lewis admits that she doesn’t know if the organization ever will. “We’d love to have a conversation with Carol [Lombardini], but if at a minimum we just raise more awareness about the fact that there is this distinction and also that producers don’t get the bare minimum that every other guild member gets, then we’ve started making a case for our cause.” She added, “So that’s our ultimate goal, is to make more people aware of our plight, too.”
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