Deal! SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP Reach Agreement for New Three-Year Contract, Strike to End at Midnight
It took a while, but after weeks of long bargaining sessions, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have finally reached an agreement to end the four-month strike tonight (PT).
Per Variety, the negotiating committee held a vote on Wednesday to approve the agreement, and they will now move to recommend it to the board and later to union members, who are expected to approve it over the next week or so. Details pending, but the guild did provide a statement saying the SAG-AFTRA strike will officially end at 12:01am PT, Thursday:
“In a unanimous vote this afternoon, The SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Committee approved a tentative agreement with the AMPTP bringing an end to the 118 day strike. The strike officially ends at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, November 9.”
As we’ve been reporting for a few days, if not weeks, it’s been an excruciating process for everyone. The studio CEOs have been on and off in their participation ever since talks restarted two weeks ago. There was even a point where it seemed like matter of hours, and the CEOs stepped down and let the lawyers fight it out. Despite that, there was a lot of stuff to iron out in terms of AI protections for the actors, and according to the trades, it all came down to a last-minute Zoom call between Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and his AMPTP counterpart, Carol Lombardini. With that minor issue solved, the guild approved the offer, after the studios set a 5pm deadline.
More details will surely come out, but from what we can tell, studio-side sources have been telling the press for days that they’ve given in on a lot of issues to the guild, including AI protections. They will also have achieved higher increases in minimums than what the WGA got, and from what the press has been saying for a few days, the streaming residuals model will be a slight improvement over what the writers got.
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.
