The Actors Guild has revealed details of an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to end the strike.

The Actors Guild of America (SAG-AFTRA) has revealed most of the details of a new three-year agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which ends the 118-day actors’ strike. Comments Julia Shagelman.

Despite the fact that the actors officially returned to work on November 9 (and immediately began to celebrate this on social networks, where they can now promote their projects again), the National Guild Council voted on the new contract for almost a day, ultimately approving it with 86% of the votes. Now, before the first week of December, it must be ratified by rank-and-file union members. But it is already clear that as a result of complex negotiations that lasted almost four months, SAG-AFTRA won, having achieved the fulfillment of almost all of its demands or a reasonable compromise on the most sensitive issues.

The agreement provides for an unprecedented increase in the minimum wage: by 7% after ratification of the contract (11% for extras – previously the most vulnerable union members), by another 4% from July 1, 2024, and by another 3.5% from July 1, 2025 . Pension and insurance contributions from employers will increase by 43% for producers of series with one-hour episodes and by 67% for those with half-hour episodes. Significant improvements have been made to relocation benefits for TV series actors: they will amount to $5 thousand per month for up to six months with no limit on the number of seasons. This means a 153% increase in relocation payments.

That brings the combined increase in all pay for actors to 14.8 percent, or more than $1 billion. That’s the highest increase in 40 years, up from the 13 percent the striking writers achieved nearly a month and a half ago. It is not without reason that SAG-AFTRA’s leadership calls its achievements a disruption of the industrial wage model.

One of the most difficult points was the regulation of the use of AI, over which negotiators on both sides fought literally to the last. The actors were concerned about the studios’ intention to use digital images of extras without restrictions, paying them only for the day of work when the scans were performed, as well as to “reanimate” dead performers and create “digital Frankenstein’s monsters” from the body parts of real actors.

As a result, SAG-AFTRA achieved most of the desired restrictions. Specifically, studios would have to ask permission from performers whose features they want to use to create “multi-part” digital actors, and pay them compensation. The union also insisted on requiring consent from the families and heirs of deceased actors to use their images. So the prospect of, say, new rom-coms with a digital Marilyn Monroe or new thrillers with a digital Humphrey Bogart has been pushed back for at least another three years.

In addition, the guild sought to limit the use of AI to one project: if a performer agreed to have a digital copy of himself appear in one film, then it could not be used anywhere else. Here we had to make a compromise – the agreement would still cover several projects, but all of them should be clearly described in the actor’s contracts.

Another stumbling block was the clause on deductions from streaming. The union’s goal was to get 2% of their revenue from the platforms (the demand was later dropped to 1%, which would be about $500 million a year). However, the producers fought to the death, and in the end the parties agreed on a bonus modeled on the one provided for in the Writers Guild of America (WGA) contract – according to preliminary estimates, it will be about $40 million a year. According to it, the authors of successful streaming shows will receive an additional 50% of their standard royalties. This is considered a show that attracted 20% of platform subscribers in the first 90 days.

The SAG-AFTRA agreement works similarly, but the bonus will be 100% of standard deductions. However, only 75% of this money will go directly to the actors of the most popular shows. The remaining 25% will be allocated to a fund jointly managed by employers and the union, and then distributed among all streaming artists. The figure of $40 million is approximate: it is unknown how many projects will reach the required threshold of viewership. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA will be closely monitoring how this system works in practice, especially as we prepare for the next negotiations in 2026.

Now that the acute stage of the Hollywood crisis has passed, the film industry is returning to normal, but this may take longer than ordinary viewers would like. Filming on Deadpool 3, Gladiator 2 and Beetlejuice 2 will resume soon, with only a short time left for these projects to complete. However, new projects will not go into production until January, after the end of the winter holidays, and the schedule of premieres for 2024 and 2025 will continue to shift. The release of new series seasons will start later than usual, many of them will have to be cut short, other studios will be completely closed to compensate for their increased costs, and the first candidates for departure will be recent new products that have not had time to accumulate reserves of audience love.

Just before the signing of the contract between SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP, Disney CEO Bob Iger called the impact of the strikes on the film industry “negligible.” However, many of his colleagues are less optimistic: Sony has cut its operating profit forecast for its film division for the current fiscal year, Warner Bros. Discovery and AMC Entertainment (owner of the largest movie theater chain in the US and the world) saw their shares fall. At the same time, the heads of these companies are confident that the negative financial consequences of the strikes will be felt at least until the end of this year. The real winner now can feel like SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, whom Meryl Streep even advised (still jokingly) to run for president of the country. The former performer of the role of the “beautiful nanny” coquettishly brushes off this proposal, but who knows – one of her predecessors, Ronald Reagan, who led the actors’ strike in 1960, at one time had just such a career.