Strike in Hollywood: actors and studios return to the negotiating table

A welcome announcement as the actors' strike which prevents all filming and promotional activity in Hollywood enters its hundredth day. After 15 days of total rupture, the studios and the actors' union, the powerful SAG-AFTRA, will find themselves at the negotiating table this Tuesday. Another encouraging sign, the bosses of several studios and platforms are expected.

To general dismay, studios and guild announced last week the suspension of their negotiations despite a salary agreement last month between the studios and representatives of the screenwriters, which ended the strike started in May by this corporation. Many industry experts hoped that this text could serve as a working basis for discussions between SAG-AFTRA and the studio alliance.

But the salary demands made by SAG-AFTRA go further than those of their fellow screenwriters. They are demanding in particular a greater increase in salaries and the payment of a tithe on each subscription to streaming platforms, and not a bonus. That would be $500 million, where the studios only want to pay $20 million. The guild is also calling for safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence.

This thaw comes as dissensions appear within SAG-AFTRA. A handful of superstars, including George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson and Ben Affleck, attempted mediation which failed. This maneuver suggests impatience with the position of the iron lady and president of SAG-AFTRA, Nanny Fran Drescher. According to Variety, some studio executives believe that Fran Drescher "is less interested in finding an agreement than leading a crusade for a better redistribution of wealth in Hollywood."

The group of stars proposed paying residual rights to the lowest paid actors and paying the heavyweights last. Another flagship measure: lifting the cap which limits union contributions for actors earning more than $1 million in fees. This would have made it possible to increase the SAG-AFTRA fund and to help the most precarious actors through various social actions. But this proposal, points out the union, is off topic and does not address any of their demands on an increase in wages and on the question of residual rights.

The window of opportunity to restart the production of feature films, save the awards season and the start of the television season before the end of the year is narrowing. Before the talks were suspended, experts were targeting November 6 as the resumption date. In particular to put in place the series projects, the scripts of which had been completed before the start of the writers' strike at the beginning of May.