SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood studios won’t be taking a break following the first day of renewed contract talks that could bring an end to the strike. In a memo to members sent Tuesday, the guild told members that negotiations will continue on Wednesday.
“Today, the CEOs came back to the table. We are scheduled to continue talks with them tomorrow,” SAG-AFTRA leaders said in the memo, obtained by TheWrap. “We will continue to provide updates with you directly. Remember – don’t believe anything you read in the press unless it comes directly from us. Keep showing up on the picket lines and make your voices heard around the country.”
SAG-AFTRA negotiators met earlier Tuesday with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios in contract talks, at the guild’s Los Angeles headquarters. The meeting came nearly two weeks after AMPTP abruptly broke off talks over the guild’s proposed revenue sharing structure for streaming services.
During that previous round of talks, SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP alternated between days of direct negotiations and internal talks, but now have signaled that direct meetings will take place on a daily basis. Studio CEOs and AMPTP president Carol Lombardini were present at Tuesday’s meeting.
Studio insiders told TheWrap earlier this week that there was a belief on the AMPTP side when talks resumed earlier this month that a viewership bonus similar to the one agreed to by the Writers Guild of America would be accepted by SAG-AFTRA. In the contract agreed to by WGA last month, writers on movies or TV episodes that are viewed by 20% of a streaming service’s subscriber base in the first 90 days of release receive a bonus.
But guild insiders said that the proposed viewership bonus was too limited in its scope to cover the wide range of performers represented by SAG-AFTRA. The guild has proposed a levy of 57 cents per subscriber that would be paid to the guild, which would in turn distribute it to members whose work appears on each streaming service.
Reaching an agreement on streaming compensation is believed to be the key hurdle to a strike-ending deal, though SAG-AFTRA has said in memos to members that talks on other issues are still yet to be completed, including minimum wages and other contract points specific to actors.
The actors strike, which has lasted 103 days and counting, is the longest ever staged by SAG-AFTRA against film and TV productions. The strike has left production in Hollywood at a standstill, with Paramount announcing on Monday that the upcoming “Mission: Impossible 8” will be delayed from June 2024 to May 2025 as the studio determined that there wouldn’t be enough time to finish the film by next summer even if a deal was imminently reached.