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Exclusive: Some of the biggest names in Hollywood met with SAG-AFTRA leadership today to get the lowdown on the breakdown of talks with the studios and streamers last week.
George Clooney, Emma Stone, Ben Affleck, Tyler Perry and Scarlett Johansson were among a group of senior talent union members who spoke Tuesday with union president Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland to get detailed information.
In meeting with union bosses via Zoom this afternoon, Oscar winners and other celebrities were particularly interested in the revenue-sharing proposals SAG-AFTRA has put forward to AMPTP and CEO Gang of Four.
This effort to get more compensation for union members has been a bitter pill for studios and streamers from the time they began initial talks with SAG-AFTRA in June until the union walked out to join the WGA on picket lines in mid-July. When negotiations began again on October 2, the proposal was still a subject of contention between the two sides.
Deliberations were suspended by studio bosses on October 11, with revenue sharing and artificial intelligence proving major sticking points.
Throughout today’s discussion, Clooney, Johansson and the rest were “very supportive” of the union leaders and their position in seeking a new three-year contract for SAG-AFTRA, a source close to the situation told Deadline. “They had a lot of questions, a few suggestions, and a lot of good comments,” an insider said separately.
While SAG-AFTRA would neither confirm nor deny the virtual chat with the A-list on Tuesday, a union spokesperson said: “We meet with members of all profiles every day and will not comment on those private conversations.”
With David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Disney’s Bob Iger are all at the negotiating table In the second set of talks between the two parties last week, SAG-AFTRA came away with a renewed outlook on how a cast can benefit from the success of a series or movie on streaming services .
Bob Iger, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav and Donna Langley
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After rejecting what AMPTP later claimed was a price of $800 million per year, AMPTP CEOs and staff left the talks at SAG-AFTRA’s Wilshire Blvd HQ at midday last Wednesday and never returned. With talks expected to resume the next day as scheduled, Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland later received a phone call informing them that the only recently activated negotiations had been halted. Echoing AMPTP’s comments on the night of October 11, Sarandos later described the latest revenue-sharing proposal as a “tax” on streaming consumers.
“We have made significant, meaningful counterwork of our own, including fully converting our revenue share proposal, which will cost companies less than 57 cents per subscriber each year,” the union said in an email to members early on the morning of Oct. 12. “. “They rejected our proposals and refused to respond,” SAG-AFTA added, asserting that the CEOs and AMPTP had tried to use “bully tactics” and “the same failed strategy they tried to impose on the WGA.”
In response to Sarandos saying the guild was seeking a tax on submarines, Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline at the October 14 New York Comic Con that such an exercise was “unreasonable!” He added: “This is like saying that workers should be compensated for their work as a tax.” that’s wrong. The reason the product exists is their business. Fair compensation and fair wages for workers are not, never have been, and never will be a tax.
For the time being, with the optimism generated by the successful WGA deal fading, no date has been set for new talks between AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA.
This Saturday will mark the 100th day of the SAG-AFTRA strike — approaching a record labor action for the 160,000-member union.
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