George and others meet with SAG-AFTRA on the strike situation

[size=37]George Clooney, Tyler Perry, Emma Stone & More Meet With SAG-AFTRA Leaders For Update On Breakdown Of Talks With Studios, Revenue-Sharing Proposal[/size]

By Dominic Patten, Anthony D'Alessandro
October 17, 2023 8:42pm

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EXCLUSIVE: Some of Hollywood’s biggest names met with the leadership of SAG-AFTRA today to get the lowdown on the breakdown of talks with the studios and streamers last week.
George Clooney, Emma Stone, Ben Affleck, Tyler Perry and Scarlett Johansson were among a group of top talent guild members that spoke Tuesday with guild president Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland for a detailed debrief, we hear.
Meeting with the guild brass via Zoom this afternoon, the Oscar winners and other A-listers were particularly interested in the revenue sharing proposals that SAG-AFTRA put before the AMPTP and the CEO Gang of Four.

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That effort to gain further compensation traction for guild members has been a bitter pill for the studios and streamers since they began initial talks with SAG-AFTRA in June and right up until the union went out to join the WGA on the picket lines in mid-July. When negotiations started up again on October 2, the proposal was still a matter of thorny contention between the two sides.
Deliberations were suspended by the studio bosses on October 11, with revenue sharing and AI proving the major sticking points.
Throughout the discussion today, Clooney, Johansson and the rest were “extremely supportive” of the union leaders and their stance in seeking a new three-year contract for SAG-AFTRA, a source close to the situation tells Deadline. “They had a lot of questions, some suggestions, and a lot of good feedback,” an insider said separately.
While SAG-AFTRA would neither confirm nor deny the virtual conversation with the A-listers Tuesday, a union spokesperson did say: “We meet with members of all profiles every day and we won’t be commenting on those private conversations,”
With Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Disney’s Bob Iger all at the bargaining table for the parties’ second set of talks last week, SAG-AFTRA came in with a revamped take on how cast could benefit from the success of a series or film on streaming services.

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Bob Iger, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav & Donna LangleyGetty/Courtesy
Balking at what the AMPTP later claimed was a $800 million a year price tag, the CEOs and their AMPTP crew left talks at SAG-AFTRA’s Wilshire Blvd HQ mid-day last Wednesday and never returned. Expecting talks to resume the next day as scheduled, Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland would later receive a call informing them the only recently-revitalized negotiations were being halted. Echoing comments from the AMPTP on the night of October 11, Sarandos later characterized the latest revenue sharing proposal as a “levy” on streaming consumers.

“We have made big, meaningful counters on our end, including completely transforming our revenue share proposal, which would cost the companies less than 57¢ per subscriber each year,” the guild said in an email to members early in the morning of October 12. “They have rejected our proposals and refused to counter,” SAG-AFTA added, asserting the CEOs and the AMPTP tried to use “bully tactics” and “the same failed strategy they tried to inflict on the WGA.” 
In response to Sarandos saying that the union was seeking a levy on subs, Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline on October 14 at New York Comic Con that such couching was “preposterous!” He added: “That’s like saying that workers should be compensated for their work as a tax. That’s wrong. The reason that product exists is because of their work. Fair compensation, fair wages for workers is not, and never has been, or will be a tax.”
At present, with the optimism occasioned by the successful WGA deal having faded, no new talks between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA are scheduled.
This Saturday will mark the 100th day SAG-AFTRA has been on strike — closing in on a record labor action for the 160,000-strong union.[/size]

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[size=42]George Clooney's Reaction To SAG-AFTRA Deal Made Fran Drescher 'So Happy'

The union reached a tentative agreement with studios and producers on Wednesday, after nearly four months on strike.

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10/11/2023 02:55am GMT



Now that the SAG-AFTRA strike is over, stars are celebrating.

Union leaders reached a tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Wednesday, ending a 118-day work stoppage.

After months of back and forth, SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee secured a contract that guarantees higher minimum salaries, increases in streaming residuals and protections around the use of artificial intelligence.

The deal is so strong that some celebrities could barely believe it, according to union president Fran Drescher.

Drescher called the contract “historic” while appearing on “Extra” on Thursday, where she told host Billy Bush the entire package was worth well over a billion dollars, and well worth the wait.


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Fran Drescher said George Clooney was floored by SAG-AFTRA's new deal with the studios when he learned the actors' strike was over this week.
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“It was moving all the way through,” the star of “The Nanny” explained. “We had reached a threshold where we crossed the billion-dollar mark and ended at a $1.01 billion, which is quite historic in terms of the size of the contract in this industry.”

Passing the billion dollar mark seemed impossible to A-lister George Clooney, who Drescher says she spoke with not long after news broke that the strike was ending.

“George Clooney said, ‘I would have bet my house and lost that you couldn’t get the deal that you got, that you wouldn’t have gotten past a billion dollars.’ And that just made me so happy,” she told Bush.

While he wasn’t part of the contract negotiations, Clooney seemed eager to help broker a deal when talks appeared to stall out in October.

He and about a dozen A-listers proposed raising membership dues for the SAG’s highest-earners to bridge the gap between the AMPTP’s offer and the cost of union health benefits.

“A lot of the top earners want to be part of the solution,” Clooney told Deadline at the time.

Watch Fran Drescher’s full interview with “Extra” here.