Yahoo News Studios Give SAG-AFTRA Deadline To Make Deal & End Strike With TV & Summer Movie Seasons In Peril
EXCLUSIVE: The studios have told SAG-AFTRA they need to come to a deal ASAP to save what’s left of the broadcast season and the 2024 Summer movie slate.
About an hour ago, representatives for the AMPTP informed the actors guild that they want to know by 5 pm PT today if a deal is possible or not, we’re told from multiple sources on both sides.
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With the fall season already a write-off and numerous movies being moved to new release dates, the studios have told SAG-AFTRA that “the demands of the business of would force us to take a look at what’s on the table,” a well-positioned individual says.
Called its “last, best and final offer” at the time, deal the studios put before SAG-AFTRA on November 3 was allegedly full of big compensation increases and “full” AI protections. With hopes to get an abbreviated season on the networks in late January or early February, there is no more wiggle room broadcasters fear to be able to get productions up and running if there isn’t a sealed deal quickly..
“It’s appropriate to bring this to an end,” a studio insider told Deadline on the flag planted in the sand Wednesday. “This deal is the best of all the guild deals and it’s up to Duncan to sell it to the members,” an C-Suiter declared today of an agreement and SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.
Another studio source tells us about the deal: “SAG-AFTRA has won.”
Neither SAG-AFTRA or the AMPTP responded to request for comment from Deadline on the deadline. If and when they do, we will update. it should be noted that any SAG-AFTRA approval of an agreement has to go through a variety of stages from the 17-member Negotiating Committee voting unanimously in favor of any deal and then it going to the guild board for another vote. Only at that point, which could see actors back at work like WGA members were once the “restraining order” was lifted, would any deal go to eligible members for a ratification vote.
Of course, the studios’ deadline tactic could blow up in their face. Especially, if the guild and its members see the move as more of the same of the AMPTP “bullying” that they and the WGA have complained about in the past. Then, not wanting to be seen as caving, the guild may flip the spotlight on the studios for crashing negotiations.
Either way, the dramatic move comes after 118 days of SAG-AFTRA being on strike and over two weeks of renewed talks between the studios and the actors guild. It also comes after the California economy has taken a $6.5 billion hit from the six months of strikes and over 45,000 entertainment industry jobs have been lost while due to the now settles WGA labor action and the 160,000-strong actors guild strike.
The deadline from the studios also comes as the two sides have been moving closer to common ground on AI and the guild has spent the past few days poring over the hundreds of pages of the studios’ latest offer. With hopes of a deal last night dashed, today saw both Warner Bros Discovery and Disney deliver mixed Q3 earning results that partially pulled back the corporate curtain on how their bottom line has been pummeled by the summer and fall of labor disputes. Both WBD and Disney stock suffered after their respective earning results were made public Wednesday.
At the core of the dispute, SAG-AFTRA negotiators are still working in the wording around AI protections, we hear. One source tells us that essentially if “digital consent is obtained from an actor, they’ll be compensated for it. If someone dies, you get clearance from the estate.”
Agents remain up in arms over not being able to book clients until 2024, this despite the number of indie films cleared for SAG-AFTRA agreements. Financiers of those pics will have to reconcile the new deal with the one they signed during the strike and account for any rising costs. One film curiously not cleared for a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement is the new Beyonce concert film which AMC is distributing and has a premiere dated for November 25. It’s like that movie is holding out for an end of the strike
About the self-described “historic” deal that the AMPTP put in front of the actors on November 3, Warner Bros Discovery CEO, who has been in the room on talks during key moments, said on an earnings call today that the studios “met virtually all of the union’s goals, and includes the highest wage increase in 40 years.” Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos, another member of the CEOs Gang of Four with Zaslav, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Disney’s Bob Iger, earlier this weekend told guild president Fran Drescher, Crabtree-Ireland and other SAG-AFTRA brass of the value of the studios “last, best and final” offer: “We didn’t just come toward you, we came all the way to you.”
Any kind of upset to what have been progressive talks would truly be disheartening to the entire industry. The blow could be hardest to below-the-line communities who are looking to have a Christmas and Hanukah and stop their financial bleeding from what has been a nearly six month double strike.
One agent feared today that “studios would punt talks to next year” as the holidays would get in the way of any kind of return to production. That said, plans are in place to resume Gladiator 2, Beetlejuice and Deadpool 3 right away once a tentative agreement is reached.
While saying he was “optimistic”about an end to the strike, Disney CEO Bob Iger may have signaled the studio’s stance earlier today on CNBC when he asserted that if the labor action lingered the summer theatrical release schedule would be in check. On an earnings call later, Iger was more robust with analysts pom-poming new releases next year Deadpool 3, Inside Out 2, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This despite the fact that Deadpool 3 won’t make its early May summer release since it’s 50% finished due to the strike, and the fact that Disney pushed Pixar’s Elio and Snow White from 2024 to 2025.
On the street level, pickets by SAG-AFTRA and supporters are scheduled in both LA and NYC for Thursday.
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