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EXCLUSIVE: Some of Hollywood’s biggest names met with the leadership of SAG-AFTRA 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 top talent guild members that spoke Tuesday with guild president Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland for a detailed debrief, we hear.
Meeting with the guild brass via Zoom this afternoon, the Oscar winners and other A-listers were particularly interested in the revenue sharing proposals that SAG-AFTRA put before the AMPTP and the CEO Gang of Four.
That effort to gain further compensation traction for guild members has been a bitter pill for the studios and streamers since they began initial talks with SAG-AFTRA in June and right up until the union went out to join the WGA on the picket lines in mid-July. When negotiations started up again on October 2, the proposal was still a matter of thorny contention between the two sides.
Deliberations were suspended by the studio bosses on October 11, with revenue sharing and AI proving the major sticking points.
Throughout the discussion today, Clooney, Johansson and the rest were “extremely supportive” of the union leaders and their stance in seeking a new three-year contract for SAG-AFTRA, a source close to the situation tells Deadline. “They had a lot of questions, some suggestions, and a lot of good feedback,” an insider said separately.
While SAG-AFTRA would neither confirm nor deny the virtual conversation with the A-listers Tuesday, a union spokesperson did say: “We meet with members of all profiles every day and we won’t be commenting on those private conversations,”
With Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Disney’s Bob Iger all at the bargaining table for the parties’ second set of talks last week, SAG-AFTRA came in with a revamped take on how cast could benefit from the success of a series or film on streaming services.
Bob Iger, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav & Donna Langley
Getty/Courtesy
Balking at what the AMPTP later claimed was a $800 million a year price tag, the CEOs and their AMPTP crew left talks at SAG-AFTRA’s Wilshire Blvd HQ mid-day last Wednesday and never returned. Expecting talks to resume the next day as scheduled, Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland would later receive a call informing them the only recently-revitalized negotiations were being halted. Echoing comments from the AMPTP on the night of October 11, Sarandos later characterized the latest revenue sharing proposal as a “levy” on streaming consumers.
“We have made big, meaningful counters on our end, including completely transforming our revenue share proposal, which would cost the companies less than 57¢ per subscriber each year,” the guild said in an email to members early in the morning of October 12. “They have rejected our proposals and refused to counter,” SAG-AFTA added, asserting the CEOs and the AMPTP tried to use “bully tactics” and “the same failed strategy they tried to inflict on the WGA.”
In response to Sarandos saying that the union was seeking a levy on subs, Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline on October 14 at New York Comic Con that such couching was “preposterous!” He added: “That’s like saying that workers should be compensated for their work as a tax. That’s wrong. The reason that product exists is because of their work. Fair compensation, fair wages for workers is not, and never has been, or will be a tax.”
At present, with the optimism occasioned by the successful WGA deal having faded, no new talks between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA are scheduled.
This Saturday will mark the 100th day SAG-AFTRA has been on strike — closing in on a record labor action for the 160,000-strong union.
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