While screenwriters scramble to get back to work, film and TV actors remain on the picket lines, their longest strike in history hit 100 day mark on Saturday after talks with the studio broke down. On the same day, the Screen Actors Guild and a coalition representing major studios announced in a joint statement that negotiations will resume next Tuesday, with several studio executives expected to join.Let’s take a look at the current state of things and their long standoff vs. past strikesand what happens next.
The inside story of failed negotiations
Hopes are high, and leaders of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists expressed cautious optimism as talks resumed on Oct. 2 for the first time since the strike began 2 1/2 months ago.
same group CEO Just a week ago, companies from the biggest studios compelling writerIts leaders celebrated their gains on many of the issues actors are also fighting for: long-term pay, consistency of employment and controls on the use of artificial intelligence.
But the actors’ conversations were tepid, with several days of breaks between meetings and no progress reports. The studio then abruptly ended discussions on October 11, saying the actor’s demands were too high and the gap between the two parties was too great to continue.
“We only met with them a few times, Monday, half day on Wednesday, half day on Friday. This is what they can do,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher told The Associated Press shortly after the meeting. “Then this past week it was Monday half, Wednesday. And then, ‘Bye.’ “I’ve never met anyone who truly didn’t understand what negotiating meant. Why walk away from the table?”
Reasons include the union’s requirement that each streaming service subscriber pay, according to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
“SAG-AFTRA has issued an ultimatum to member companies: agree to the proposed subscriber tax and all other pending items or the strike will continue,” AMPTP said in a statement to The Associated Press. AFTRA’s ultimatum has been responded to and, unfortunately, taxing subscribers has created an unbearable financial burden.”
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, one of the senior executives who participated in the negotiation meeting, told investors Earnings Conference Call Wednesday, “Unfortunately, it really ruined our momentum.”
SAG-AFTRA leaders said it was absurd to view the demand as a tax on customers and said executives themselves wanted to shift from a model based on the popularity of shows to one based on subscriber numbers.
“We made significant moves in their direction, but they were ignored and not responded to,” Duncan Crabtree – IrelandSAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator told The Associated Press. “We made changes to the artificial intelligence proposal. We made huge changes to the previous streaming revenue share proposal,” Crabtree-Ireland said.
After negotiations ended, the studios said the subscriber fee would cost them $800 million a year, a figure that SAG-AFTRA said was a vast overestimate.
AMPTP later responded that the figure was based on the union’s request of $1 per customer per year, which dropped to 57 cents after SAG-AFTRA changed its assessment to remove irrelevant programming such as news and sports.
What’s next for the actors’ strike?
The actors are in unscripted territory. Their union had never gone on strike for so long, or even gone on strike at all before many of its members were born. Even veteran leaders like Crabtree-Ireland, who has been with the union for 20 years, have not found themselves in such a position.
SAG-AFTRA expressed its willingness to resume at any time but would not change its requirements.
“I think they thought we were going to cower,” Drescher said. “But that will never happen because this is a crossroads and we have to keep walking.”
The screenwriter does have his own false start Partnering with a studio might give us some reason for optimism. Their union tried to restart negotiations with the studios in mid-August, more than three months after the strike. These negotiations went nowhere and were broken off after a few days. A month later, the studio alliance called again. Those negotiations began, and after five marathon days most of their demands were met, culminating in a tentative agreement that was approved by a near-unanimous vote of its members.
What was the outcome of previous actors’ strikes?
Hollywood actors strike It is less frequent and shorter than the writer’s work. The Screen Actors Guild (who added “AFTRA” when they merged in 2011) has staged only three strikes against film and television studios in its history.
In each case, emerging technologies exacerbated the dispute. In 1960—the only time actors and writers struck simultaneously—the central issue was actors seeking to be paid what the industry called residual compensation for their film work being shown on television. The union, led by future U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was a smaller and less formal entity at the time.this vote to strike The story takes place in the home of actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, parents of the current SAG-AFTRA member and vocal frontman Jamie Lee Curtis.
During strike, actors and studios declare truce so everyone can participate Awards ceremony –Today’s union rules prohibit this. Host Bob Hope called the gathering “Hollywood’s most glamorous walkout meeting.”
Eventually, a compromise was reached in which the Screen Actors Guild dropped its demands for the remainder of past films in exchange for contributions to its retirement fund and payments for future films when they aired on television. Their 42-day shutdown began and ended during a longer writers’ strike.
A 1980 strike This will be the longest time the actors have appeared in movies and TV series before this year. At the time, they demanded to be paid when their work appeared on home video and cable television, along with substantially higher minimum pay for their roles. A tentative agreement was reached and significant progress was made, but significant compromises were made in both areas. After 67 days, union leadership declared the strike over, but many members were dissatisfied and unwilling to return to work. It took leaders nearly a month to muster enough votes to ratify the deal.
This time, it’s Emmy Awards That was down on strike. The Television Academy held a ceremony but only one acting award winner, Powers Booth, was present to accept the trophy after calls for a boycott.
Other parts of the Screen Actors Guild have also gone on strike, including in several long-running standoffs over TV advertising contracts. From 2016 to 2017, the strike by the union’s video game voice actors lasted for 11 months. If a new contract agreement cannot be reached, this part of the union may soon go on strike again.
What happened to movies and TV shows?
The return of writers has got the Hollywood production machine humming again, with rooms packed with scribes writing episodes for the paused new season and movie writers finishing scripts.However, production of the finished product will not continue until the actors’ strike is over. Many TV shows and dozens of movies have been suspendedincluding “Wicked,” “Deadpool 3” and “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2.”
Emmy AwardsThe nominations were announced the day before the actors’ strike was called, this time opting to wait for the stars and delay the ceremony from September to January – although that date may also be in jeopardy.
this Oscar prize There’s still a long way to go until March, but the campaign to win games is generally well underway now. With some exceptions — union-sanctioned non-studio productions — performers are prohibited from promoting their films at press conferences or on red carpets.director Martin Scorsese has been giving interviews about his new Oscar contender” Killers of the Flower Moon”. Neither stars nor SAG-AFTRA members Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro.
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