Hollywood’s studios and actors are still not seeing eye to eye.
NBC News reports that negotiations between Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and Hollywood studios have been suspended. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the alliance of Hollywood studios, has claimed that the gap between it and the actors guild “is too great,” also adding that conversations with the actors’ guild “are no longer moving us in a productive direction.”
SAG-AFTRA released a statement to its members saying in part that “it is with profound disappointment that we report the industry CEOs have walked away from the bargaining table after refusing to counter our latest offer.”
“We have negotiated with them in good faith, despite the fact that last week they presented an offer that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began,” the union continued. “The companies are using the same failed strategy they tried to inflict on the WGA–putting out misleading information in an attempt to fool our members into abandoning our solidarity and putting pressure on our negotiators. But, just like the writers, our members are smarter than that and will not be fooled.”
The union ends with saying, “Our resolve is unwavering.”
According to the New York Times, the studio alliance stated Thursday that it “had offered wage increases, met ‘nearly all of the unions demands on casting’ and proposed further protections around the use of A.I.” The alliance also claims that it offered the same protections writers were offered, protections that were ratified by the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA), meaning writers can now go back to work. The alliance claims that the actors also wanted a viewership bonus that the studios claim “would cost more than $800 million per year, which would create an untenable economic burden.”
However, the actors’ union claim that studios are still adamant about using actors’ likenesses for A.I. technology, thereby possibly making actors redundant. The union also claims, according to The Hollywood Reporter, that the studios have overinflated the cost of its proposal “by 60 percent” and are using “bully tactics” to misrepresent the demands of actors.
“These companies refuse to protect performers from being replaced by artificial intelligence, they refuse to increase your wages to keep up with inflation, and they refuse to share a tiny portion of the immense revenue YOUR work generates for them,” SAG-AFTRA stated.
The union claims that instead of protecting actors from having their likenesses fed into AI, the studios want to upend actors’ consent to such a practice. While the studios have claimed to want to protect performer consent, the union said, they are instead “continuing to demand ‘consent’ on the first day of employment for use of a performer’s digital replica for an entire cinematic universe (or any franchise project).”
