Glenn Close Indie ‘The Summer Book’ Among Latest Films Given SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreements

SAG-AFTRA has granted more waivers in recent days that give permission to indie projects to shoot during the current strike, including the independent film The Summer Book starring Glenn Close. Other recent projects that will be allowed to shoot include the TV series Underdeveloped and Sight Unseen.

The guild has now allowed 68 projects the ability to shoot during the strike, a list that includes a couple of A24 films, Mother Mary and I Dream of Unicorns, as well as the Apple TV+ series Tehran.

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Other projects include the Bible-based series The Chosen, which was the first known series to get the SAG-AFTRA exemption on July 16.

Applications for the waivers were made available on the first day of the strike, which was July 14, and the guild immediately received “hundreds of applications … we will be responding to all of them,” SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said at the time, noting that projects can’t have “any AMPTP fingerprints on them” if they hope to be granted an agreement.

The Summer Book is directed by Charlie McDowell and tells the inspirational story of a young girl and her grandmother spending a summer on a small, uninhabited island in the Gulf of Finland.

At Comic-Con on Friday, Crabtree-Ireland explained to Deadline why some projects have been granted interim agreements even though they may have ties to major studios.

“It goes to reflect the complexity and the business relationships and structures in this industry,” he said. He added that the agreements “are the terms of our last counter-offer to the AMPTP on all the issues in this negotiation.”

Generally, however, “if there are AMPTP connections to the project, then [waivers] won’t be [granted],” he said. “That’s the big-picture answer. Everyone needs to be investigated and evaluated individually because obviously the question of ‘Are there AMPTP fingerprints or connections to the project?’ is a very specific question. That means it takes a few days to a week depending on volume, maybe a little more for us to evaluate whether a project can receive an interim agreement.”

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