Update: The A-Listers' Proposal to End the Strike Was ... Interesting

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 19, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 19, 2023 |

As always, when it comes to reporting from the trades, look for the studio agenda. In this case, the agenda may be to generate some friction within the Screen Actors Guild. As we wrote earlier (below), several A-listers (Clooney, Stone, Affleck, Johansson, Tyler Perry, etc.) met with SAG leadership. It wasn’t just to jumpstart negotiations; it was to offer a proposal.

Specifically, according to Deadline, their proposal was to remove the $1 million cap on union dues (in other words, dues would be tied to income beyond the first $1 million earned). Doing so would reportedly raise $50 million a year from wealthier actors. They also proposed “a bottom-up residual structure — meaning the top of the call sheet would be the last to collect residuals, not the first.”

It’s interesting, although it’s hard to imagine all the wealthier actors would agree to be last to collect residuals. It does seem like a generous proposal from a group of very rich actors willing to share in their wealth, so to speak.

According to Variety, the proposal was rejected because it was unrelated to the issues holding up negotiations with the studios. The A-listers felt “dejected,” but also frustrated that negotiations with the studios broke down and even more frustrated, according to a Variety source, that SAG-AFTRA does not have a plan.

Original Article Below

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After the five-month WGA strike was resolved last month, many optimistically believed that a resolution to the SAG-AFTRA strike would soon follow. However, after nine days of on-again, off-again negotiations, the studios left the bargaining table over one sticking point they were unwilling to negotiate.

Both sides seem to agree on what that sticking point is, although they characterize it differently. The actors want a yearly portion of streaming subscriber fees ($.57 to $1 per subscriber, depending on who you ask). The money — the actors are asking for about $5-$800 million a year — would go into a trust that would be distributed to the actors by the guild. It’s unclear how the guild would distribute the money, but the CEOs are suggesting that it would be distributed to actors based not on the success of a project but on the amount of time worked. That sounds like a no-go for the studios, who were only willing to provide a much smaller success-based residual to writers based on how well a project performed.

While public sentiment decidedly remains with the actors, it also feels like the media isn’t as invested anymore. We’re not seeing as many images of picket lines. Americans’ attention shifted elsewhere.

Moreover, some A-list actors — the people who are frankly less affected by the terms of the SAG-AFTRA contract — are reportedly “looking for a path to restart negotiations and end the strike” while remaining supportive of the guild. The A-listers who reportedly met with SAG-AFTRA leadership include Emma Stone, George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Tyler Perry, and Ben Affleck.

It’s unclear what this might mean, although it’s worth noting that the WGA and the studios began to negotiate in earnest after it leaked that several showrunners (Ryan Murphy, Kenya Barris, Noah Hawley) reportedly wanted to meet with the WGA to encourage them to look “for a path to restart negotiations.”

Meanwhile, boasting about their success during Netflix’s quarterly report yesterday, Ted Sarandos said that, “We want nothing more than to resolve this and get everyone back to work. That’s true for Netflix. That’s true for every member of the AMPTP.”

“Talking about putting people back to work while refusing to negotiate is just spin,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline in response.