SAG-AFTRA & Studios end talks for today; The guild is awaiting AMPTP’s response to the latest proposal

EXCLUSIVE: Sunday will not be a rest day for SAG-AFTRA leadership and studios this weekend.

Today’s virtual meeting between the AMPTP and Guild leaders Fran Drescher, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee has just concluded.

While the guild awaits a response from the studios to their latest proposal, it looks like the two parties will begin work tomorrow, October 29. Whether this means a new meeting, virtual or in person, or a day of evaluation, is not yet clear, we hear.

Saturday’s virtual session was described by Deadline as “a deep dive” into the heart of the case.

The big studio’s Gang of Four – Disney’s Bob Iger, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley – were not present today.

Studios are eager to resume global television and film productions, which have been on hold for 107 days since the actors left on July 14. Like the WGA, the AMPTP is urging the guild to lift the order and allow members to return to work even before a provisional agreement has been ratified. Although the WGA agreed to return to work during the ratification process of its contract with studios, the fact that this 12,000-member union was able to do so faced less complex issues than the 160,000-member Screen Actors Guild, given its size .

Today’s meeting follows a Zoom session on Friday that was described by many as “disappointing” in terms of progress. However, the continued willingness of both parties to meet is a better sign than no talks at all.

After talks resumed on October 24, the studios proposed an increase in minimum rates, as well as higher bonuses based on the success of streaming shows and films. Studios offered a 7% increase in minimums, with SAG-AFTRA offering a self-described “comprehensive counter” on Friday that went from an 11% increase to 9%, sources on both sides told Deadline.

The studio’s proposal last week was in response to actors’ calls for an annual fee of 57 cents per subscriber for streamers. This request from SAG-AFTRA caused great anger among the studio buyers. The studios “suspended” talks on October 11 for 12 days. Sarandos specifically called the actors’ proposal “a tax on subscribers.” Crabtree-Ireland spoke out about Sarandos’ words at NY Comic-Con, saying they were “ridiculous”!

“It’s like saying workers should be compensated for their work as a tax. This is wrong. The reason the product exists is because of their work. “Fair compensation and fair wages for workers is and never has been a tax,” SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator and national executive director told Deadline.

Some on the studio side have criticized that a subscription fee would be counterproductive for actors given the decline in captions from an OTT service; The AMPTP parties believed that a performance-based measurement of revenue share would be better.

Thursday night, amid a week of recurring talks, an open letter to the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee from Julia Louis Dreyfus, Jon Hamm, Sarah Paulson, Chelsea Handler, Christian Slater, Sandra Oh, Daveed Diggs, Pedro Pascal and others highlighted : “We.” I’d rather go on strike than make a bad deal.

Drescher, Crabtree-Ireland and the Mission Negotiating Committee expressed the guild’s need to overhaul an outdated balance payment structure that does not take streaming into account. The days of guest appearances, when syndicated leftovers from long-running television series could brighten an actor’s year, are long gone. Short episodic circuits are the new norm.

The impact of the twin strikes has already cost the state of California $6.5 billion, and many workers are suffering from the halt in production and the loss of 45,000 manufacturing jobs. The global box office will already lose $1.5 billion in 2024 due to the delay Mission: Impossible 8, Snow White and Pixar’s Elio Even if an actors’ strike ends in the near future, the resumption of production and post-production of such films is highly dependent on the actors.