SAG-AFTRA Deal Not Done, But It’s on the Right Path
After a week of intense negotiations, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP are zeroing in on a deal, according to both parties, but we’re still not there yet. Deadline was the first to report on Friday night that there were still a lot of details to be ironed out, while the rest of the town was pretty much opening the champagne. The truth was somewhere in the middle: There have been significant advancements over the past few days, but this deal is a lot more complicated than the writers’, so it’s not going to be as “easy” to sign.
Deadline reports on Monday that both sides are asking for caution while acknowledging that this should be done within days. A studio-side source told the trade: “Things are moving along, but everything takes time”. An “industry eminence” also added the following: “Anyone who tells you there’s a done deal just doesn’t know what’s really going on.” The story was published at a time when the guild had yet to hear back from the AMPTP on their response to SAG-AFTRA’s latest counter.
Still, reading between the lines, it seems clear that there have been significant improvements made over the past week, and there are reports out there that lawyers are already in the room drafting up the contract. But this is significantly more complex than the WGA’s. Case in point: AI regulations. Joe Biden issued an executive order on Monday to implement necessary AI safeguards, but the actors still have to protect themselves in the new three-year contract, and this is something that will require both a lot more subtlety and a lot more revisions from the SAG-AFTRA lawyers to look for any loopholes.
The studios reportedly set an internal deadline for the beginning of the month to either end the strike or reschedule talks to January, and though it seems like the CEOs are aware that it’s just a matter of days now, the situation is more complicated than ever, as any small perturbation could cause huge damage to the industry for the next couple of months. 4,000 members of the guild signed last week a letter telling the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee they are ready to keep striking as long as necessary, with names including Julia Louis Dreyfus, Jon Hamm, Sarah Paulson, or Pedro Pascal, but missing some people who’d signed a similar letter earlier this summer, like Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, or Joaquin Phoenix.
Talks should resume at some point later this week, possibly on Tuesday.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
