A negotiating committee for SAG members recommended that their national board call a strike as talks failed to yield a deal.
The Screen Actors Guild appears to be headed for a strike as talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers fell apart after Wednesday’s midnight deadline.
The negotiating committee unanimously recommended a strike to the national board, which is set to vote on Thursday morning.
“After more than four weeks of negotiations, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) — the entity that represents major studios and streamers, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros Discovery — remains unwilling to offer a fair deal on the key issues that you told us are important to you,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland wrote in a statement early Thursday morning.
Members of the performers union have been in talks with representatives for Hollywood studios since June 7. Around the time negotiations kicked off, SAG-AFTRA members voted by a 98% margin in favor of striking if a new deal couldn’t be reached by June 30, when their contract expired. The two sides extended negotiations into July but failed to come to an agreement.
This would mark the first SAG strike since 2000, when performers picketed in the longest-ever actors strike from May through October of that year.
On June 23, in the middle of negotiations, Drescher, star of the ’90s sitcom “The Nanny,” said in a video message that the two sides have had “extremely productive negotiations that are laser focused on all of the crucial issues you told us are most important to you,” promising members a “seminal deal.”
But days later on June 27, more than 300 actors responded in a letter saying they were concerned about the guild making concessions on core issues, which include minimum pay, residuals for shows on streaming services, pensions and the way producers use actors’ self-tapes.
“We hope you’ve heard the message from us: This is an unprecedented inflection point in our industry, and what might be considered a good deal in any other years is simply not enough,” they wrote. “We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and the power of our union have all been undermined in the last decade. We need to reverse those trajectories.”
Signatories include some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Jennifer Lawrence.
Drescher has also been under fire for taking a promotional trip to Italy with Dolce & Gabbana as contract talks neared a breaking point. SAG responded to the criticism by saying that Drescher has still been participating in negotiations every day.
The strike is expected to majorly disrupt an industry already shaken up by screenwriters who’ve been striking since May 2. This would mark the first time in more than 60 years that both Writers Guild of America members and SAG members will be on strike at the same time.
Liza Hearon contributed to this article.
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