SAG-AFTRA actors avoid strike with 12 day contract extension
Last Friday June 30 was a big deadline in Hollywood–it was when the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) contract would expire. The million dollar question was whether the actors would join the Writers Guild of America (WGA) on strike. The WGA has been on strike since early May seeking better wages, protections against AI and a serious revision on the distribution of streaming residuals. As deals stand now, the big networks, studios and streamers–represented in negotiations by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)–make a grossly unfair cut of the residuals. So the WGA took the first bold move to strike against AMPTP knowing that negotiations between AMPTP and the directors (DGA) and actors guilds were to follow, both with June 30 deadlines and with largely the same issues to be redressed. The DGA reached a deal with AMPTP in early June that they ratified a couple weeks ago. It all came down to the actors. With stakes high, it was a bit of a let down–purely in terms of dramatic tension–when we learned last Friday that an extension period was agreed to, meaning no deal reached but also no strike… yet:
Hollywood actors will stay on the job–for now.
After a month of tense negotiations between Hollywood actors’ union and the major studios, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will continue talking, the guild announced late Friday, averting a strike, at least for 12 more days.
The contract, which was set to expire at 11:59 p.m. PDT Friday, will now expire on July 12 at the same time, the actors union and the studios and networks group said in a joint statement. “The parties will continue to negotiate under a mutually agreed upon media blackout.” The new deadline falls just hours after TV’s Emmy Awards announce nominations for this year’s ceremony.
There is a lot at stake in the “seminal” negotiations, so-called by SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher. The rise of streaming services, the advent of artificial intelligence technology and the greater economic headwinds have changed how actors are paid. Actors want increased base compensation, which they say has been undercut by inflation and the streaming ecosystem, regulated use of artificial intelligence, better benefit plans and money for “self-taped auditions”–the cost of which used to be the responsibility of casting and production.
Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland sent a hopeful message to the membership over the weekend about the talks. It was quickly followed Wednesday by an open letter from over 1,000 SAG members to the leadership. The letter, signed by names as big as Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, expressed the membership’s sincere willingness to strike if they were not able to achieve all their demands in a new contract.
The entertainment industry is already mostly shut down after the Writers Guild of America went on strike May 2. Actors shared many of the same concerns and demands as the writers, including regulating AI and establishing an updated pay scale for work on streaming content. It is possible a deal with SAG could move the needle in negotiations between the AMPTP and the WGA. The AMPTP also reached a deal with the Directors Guild of America that was ratified by its membership June 24.
Members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were last on strike at the same time in 1988, when commercial actors and writers were both on the picket line. Hollywood actors and writers were also both on strike in 1960. Although many Hollywood film and TV sets are already shut down without writers, losing actors will bring worldwide production to a standstill, delaying series including HBO’s “House of the Dragon” and films such as “Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part Two.” A strike could also delay or cancel the Emmy Awards, currently scheduled for September, and depress the lineup at San Diego Comic-Con in July, usually an event full of A-list Hollywood actors, writers and directors.
OK I have to get this out of the way first: somehow in the weeks of tracking this story I missed the fact that SAG’s chief negotiator was named Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. That’s not a law firm, that is one man’s name! How can they lose with that name behind them?!
Moving on, my read on this is that SAG was ready to strike so AMPTP moved to avert by agreeing to an extension (just not to better terms, of course). The actors are undeniably the most visible group, and we already knew that the studios have been worried about summer movies being disrupted by actors joining the strike. But what comes after summer? Fall, when studios launch award season campaigns at film festivals and release their prestige projects. Whether it’s now or in a couple months, the studios face losing a lot of money if they don’t settle with SAG and WGA (and don’t forget that virtually no new work is in production due to the writers strike). My point is that moving to stall now is just delaying the inevitable, which is an overdue reckoning on revenue in the age of streaming, as well putting in protections now against AI taking away jobs from artists. Mark your calendars for July 12.
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