Representatives for the Screen Actors Guild, or SAG-AFTRA, and Hollywood studios returned to the bargaining table today. As of Tuesday, members of the actors guild have been on strike for 90 days. Since rekindling negotiations, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have been coming together every other day, although a deal has yet to be reached.
SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, AMPTP, held several talks last week after two and a half months without communication. The conversations were “polite but intense,” a source close to the matters told Deadline, and there remains a “deep divide” over SAG-AFTRA’s revenue-sharing proposal. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal Chief Content Officer Donna Langley and Disney CEO Bob Iger as well as AMPTP president Carol Lombardini were in attendance for Monday’s talks, according to Deadline.
“SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP held negotiations and have concluded for the day,” the two parties said in a joint statement Monday. “Bargaining will continue on Wednesday, October 11, with the parties working independently on Tuesday.”
SAG-AFTRA went on strike in July after their contract expired. The guild members’ demands include higher pay along with more contributions to pension and healthcare funds as well as recalculated residuals members are paid through streaming service revenue. The union also wants changes for “abusive” self-taping audition process and, like writers, protection against the use of AI.
The guild members joined the Hollywood writers on the picket line and brought the entertainment industry to a grinding halt. With both groups on strike, the fate of the 2023-2024 television season looked grim. Studios are beginning to feel the strain of standoff in their bottom lines.
Warner Bros. Discovery was reported to possibly lose up to $500 million in adjusted earnings this year due to the strikes. In August, the entertainment industry had lost 17,000 jobs “reflecting strike activity,” according to an employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Writers might be back to work, but with actors still working out their own deal with studio execs, many productions are still on hold. The momentum from the end of the writers’ strike and the similar concessions between the two organizations could help the actors and studios more quickly find common ground.