Bob Iger “delighted” with SAG-AFTRA deal; “It was about time,” Disney boss says of the end of the strike

EXCLUSIVE: Bob Iger finally got his wish today

“I’m excited,” Disney’s CEO told Deadline tonight about his reaction to the deal between SAG-AFTRA and the studios.

“It’s been, as you know, a long summer in this city and this is an industry that really needs to get back to work and wants to get back to work,” Iger added during the event Wish premiered in Hollywood just hours after the tentative agreement with the guild was announced. “I will be one of the people who can only welcome the return to production in this community.”

Iger’s comments tonight come after a long 24 hours for the director, the guild and the industry.

On the 118th day of the strike on Wednesday, hopes of a Tuesday night deal, a weak third-quarter earnings result for Disney, concerns about 2024 and the AMPTP’s notice to SAG-AFTRA were dashed. In a risky move that could have very easily backfired, the studios told the guild that if they didn’t hear back by 5pm PT, they might as well take their balls and go home. To ease the leap into hyperspace, SAG-AFTRA’s 17-member negotiating committee voted to approve the agreement with the studios and its “unprecedented terms,” ​​as the guild later called them. the threat of the AMPTP.

Ultimately, every member of the negotiating committee voted in favor of the deal and everything was settled before 5pm PT.

With the strike officially ending on November 9 at 12:01 am. PT ended and with hopes of getting the TV and movie seasons back on track next year, Iger was able to reflect on all that has happened and what lies ahead.

“It’s about time,” he said of the tentative agreement, which still needs to be approved by the SAG-AFTRA board and ratified by eligible members of the 160,000-member guild. “I’m very happy that after so long we were able to reach an agreement with SAG for the actors, and that will be it,” Iger noted at the El Capitan Theater for the animated musical comedy written by Jennifer Lee.

“Welcome back,” the talent-friendly CEO concluded in a direct message to the actors.

Iger, who has been a key member of both the WKV and SAG-AFTRA negotiations in recent months as a member of the CEOs’ Gang of Four, got off to a rocky start in the labor dispute earlier this summer when he described the guild’s demands as ” “just not realistic” and “very disturbing” in a TV interview.

The successor as CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav, who was berated on the picket lines, the usually smooth-talking Iger initially left Disney’s daily presence in conversations with Dana. Walden and Alan Bergman. However, renewed discussions with the scribes began in August and later again with greater success in September. Iger became much more involved, along with Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Warner Bros Discovery’s Zaslav.

Iger worked his way back to his old self in the final days of WGA talks that led to an agreement on Sept. 24. -AFTRA negotiations, where Iger was the one to call chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland on the 100th^e Day of this industrial action to propose a resumption of talks on 24 October. Although egos flared and Iger reportedly “lost his head” at one point in the SAG-AFTRA deliberations, the CEOs’ presence in the discussions was generally considered productive.

“First of all, I want to say that I have the utmost respect for actors,” Iger said in his live interview with CNBC today. “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.

Now that there is peace between the actors’ fraternity and the studios, it is expected that production will increase rapidly and not only talent, but also below-the-line workers and many more people will return to work.