SAG-AFTRA Negotiations to Continue Friday, Next Week

Negotiations are moving forward for Hollywood’s largest union.

SAG-AFTRA announced Wednesday in a new joint statement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of studios and streamers, that talks would continue on Friday and resume on Monday. The joint statement and the continuation of negotiations will likely be read as a positive sign as the 2023 actors’ strike continues.

“SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP met for a daylong negotiating session and concluded,” the statement said. “Negotiations will continue on Friday, October 6, with the parties working internally throughout the weekend and resuming on Monday, October 9.”

SAG-AFTRA has resumed negotiations with the AMPTP for the first time since the strike on Monday, July 14. The parties changed the location — meeting at the union’s national headquarters in Los Angeles, as opposed to the AMPTP’s offices in Sherman Oaks — and brought in some of the industry’s top leaders, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman and Chief Content Officer Donna Langley. Both sides took a break on Tuesday before resuming talks on Wednesday.

SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland took a break from negotiations on Wednesday to address the Federal Trade Commission on the threat of generative AI to the creative industries – which is one of SAG’s key issues -AFTRA is in 2023 negotiations. In the lecture, Crabtree-Ireland argued that there was a “double standard” when it came to studios and entertainment companies using AI. “If an individual were to decide to infringe on the copyrighted content of one of these companies and distribute it without paying for the licensing fees, that individual would face many financial and legal consequences,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “So one of the reasons why the reverse isn’t true? Shouldn’t the individuals whose intellectual property was used to train the AI ​​algorithm be at least equally protected?”

More to come.