Actors were back on the picket lines Thursday amid renewed uncertainty about the future, one day after contract talks that appeared to be progressing broke off with Hollywood studios, raising fears of a more protracted impasse.
Negotiators with the SAG-AFTRA performers’ union and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers met Wednesday, but both sides issued statements Wednesday night saying the talks had fallen apart.
“We have negotiated with them in good faith, despite the fact that last week they presented an offer that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began,” according to a statement by SAG-AFTRA late Wednesday.
The union said studio CEOs “walked away from the bargaining table after refusing to counter our latest offer.”
The AMPTP, which represents the studios, issued a statement saying negotiations were “suspended after SAG-AFTRA presented its most recent proposal on October 11. After meaningful conversations, it is clear that the gap between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA is too great, and conversations are no longer moving us in a productive direction.”
The two sides met five times since Oct. 2, their first talks since the SAG-AFTRA strike began July 14, including on Wednesday.
SAG-AFTRA demands include general wage increases, protections against the use of actor images through artificial intelligence, boosts in compensation for successful streaming programs and improvements in health and retirement benefits.
In its Wednesday night statement, the union contended that the studios “refuse to protect performers from being replaced by AI, they refuse to increase your wages to keep up with inflation and they refuse to share a tiny portion of the immense revenue your work generates for them.”
“We have made big meaningful counters on our end, including completely transforming our revenue share proposal, which would cost the companies less than 57 cents per subscriber each year. They have rejected our proposals and refused to counter.”
On Thursday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who has been participating in the talks along with other major studios heads, said during a Bloomberg conference that the negotiations disintegrated over a union proposal to add a “levy” on every streaming service subscriber.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sarandos told conference attendees that the union rejected a “success-based bonus” revenue model similar to the one recently accepted by the Writers Guild of America union, but which was far more costly.
“That was rejected and the counter was this levy on every subscriber and prior to that was a levy on all revenue, where basically the union will take a certain amount of money for every subscriber to a service,” Sarandos said, according to THR. “That issue we got resolved with the writers was not only accepted in the deal but ratified by a 99 percent vote of the Writers Guild. So I know that these guilds are not created equal and they all have different needs and more bespoke needs, but like I said, that is one that worked that rewarded success, which we agreed with. But a levy on top of our revenue or per subscriber, with no insight into the revenue per subscriber or anything, we just felt like a bridge too far to add this deep into the negotiation.”
The Writers Guild of America ended its strike against the studios on Sept. 27. Members of the WGA ratified the agreement earlier this week to end the strike that began on May 2.
SAG-AFTRA accused the studios of using “bully tactics” and intentionally misrepresenting the cost of the union’s proposal, “overstating it by 60%.”
“The companies are using the same failed strategy they tried to inflict on the WGA — putting out misleading information in an attempt to fool our members into abandoning our solidarity and putting pressure on our negotiators,” according to the union. “But, just like the writers, our members are smarter than that and will not be fooled.”