Bob Iger’s ‘Optimistic’ SAG-AFTRA Deal Is Coming; Talks are continuing “as we speak,” Disney boss says

There is no agreement between the studios and SAG-AFTRA yet, but Bob Iger hopes that an agreement will be reached soon.

“All I can say is that I’m optimistic we’ll find out relatively soon,” Disney’s chief executive said Wednesday, shortly after the media giant reported mixed third-quarter results. After 118 days of action by the actors’ guild workers, Hollywood was confident that an end to the strike was imminent. This joy arose mainly as both sides came closer to reaching an agreement on the associated issues of AI protection.

But no deal was reached last night as the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee continued to consider the AMPTP’s self-described “last, best and final offer” on November 3.

Today, Iger told CNBC in a live broadcast that things are fluid. “I don’t want to be specific except to say that all of us, SAG and the AMPTP companies, are working very hard and trying to solve this problem as we speak.”

“First of all, I want to say that I have the greatest respect for actors,” the director noted at the beginning of the interview. “They are an incredibly important part of the Walt Disney Company for obvious reasons. And we worked hard. We, the companies involved in this business and the Screen Actors Guild are trying to find a way to get them back to work

The vast majority of SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 members have joined the picket lines since mid-July. After the already high-profile WGA settled its dispute with the studios in late September, the sweeping industrial action has crippled Hollywood and thrown a fall TV season and 2024 filming schedules into disarray. “In terms of the impact on business so far, it’s been negligible,” Iger said of Wednesday’s strike, with a certain amount of deliberate understatement. In the long term, that is, if the strike lasts much longer, it could become significant,” he added on the eve of a weekend in which The Marvels are likely to get off to a poor start. “Of course we want to try to maintain a summer full of films. The whole industry is attuned to this. We don’t have much time for that, I think a week or two.”

During the Disney earnings call currently underway, Iger opened things up in language very similar to what the CEO told CNBC in a session immediately following the release of the earnings report this afternoon.