Hundreds of Agents Meet With SAG-AFTRA Leaders Ahead of Potential Strike – Hollywood Reporter

THR Illustration / Michael Buckner

On Monday, as the Wednesday night negotiation deadline between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) drew nearer, union leadership began to circle the wagons.

Several sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that over 300 top agents got on a Zoom call with Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator and national executive director, and Ray Rodriguez, the chief contracts officer, to answer questions about negotiations and operating during a potential strike.

Negotiation topics that were covered on the call included series exclusivity, residuals, option periods and, of course, uses of A.I., sources say. Additionally, the leadership said members would be allowed to continue work on Actors’ Equity Association and ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) projects after a strike was called; SAG-AFTRA would wait to grant waivers until after the work stoppage commenced.

SAG-AFTRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The call with SAG-AFTRA included agents from WME, CAA and UTA, among other agencies, and came on the same day that leadership got on a call with top publicists repping A-list talent to go over protocols and best practices for promotion should there be a strike. (Promotion and press of film and TV projects from struck companies would not be allowed, says one source who was familiar with that call.)

As for the potential of a strike, one source noted of the agents’ call that it was being talked about as if it were an inevitability, telling THR, “They were not speaking in conditional sentences.”

Of course, these calls happened on Monday, and, as the clock winds down and a potential strike draws nearer, more negotiation updates are being batted around.

On Tuesday, news surfaced that the AMPTP had requested assistance from the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service to help head off a potential SAG-AFTRA strike. The decision came after Monday calls among major company general counsels and leaders, including Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Warner Bros.-Discovery chief David Zaslav, surfaced the idea. For the federal agency to get involved, however, SAG-AFTRA would have to agree to such an arrangement. (SAG-AFTRA has not yet responded to THR‘s request for comment about potential mediation.)

If the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA agree to a federal mediator, there is likely to be yet another extension to negotiations. Says an agent who was on Monday’s call, “I wouldn’t be surprised for another extension, in the spirit of getting things done.”

Katie Kilkenny contributed to this report.