On today’s episode of the Daily Variety podcast, Variety’s Gene Madaus provides an update on contract negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and major studios and streamers. Next, the Writers Guild of America will join starting March 16th. Will SAG-AFTRA reach an agreement by the end of the week? Madaus delves into the issues and situations that are influencing the atmosphere at the negotiating table at the Sherman Oaks headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
“Essentially,[SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP]are going to continue talking until Friday, and then we’ll either come to an agreement or we’ll stop talking until June to get the scriptwriters in on Monday,” Maddaus said. “So it’s anyone’s guess whether they’re going to get a contract or not. And maybe they don’t know. But my feeling was that things were being handled professionally, but not quickly,” says Madaus, Variety’s senior media writer. “So it’s very likely that it will start in June. The actors will have a little more leverage at that point anyway. So it might be in their interest for SAG-AFTRA to start in June, it might be in the writers’ interest as well. And it might be in the interest of the writers that AMPTP So it doesn’t surprise me at all to see[SAG-AFTRA]announced on Friday and say, ‘Well, we’ve made some progress, but we’re not there yet.'” We’ll come back once the writers and directors are done. ” ”
Madaus noted that all three guilds are looking to make progress in the area of AI issues after winning the first provisions related to innovative technologies in the hard-fought 2023 bargaining cycle that culminated in more than six months of strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA. One of the biggest challenges is using existing materials to train AI models and databases on how to create new materials informed by hundreds, if not thousands, of inputs.
“What’s still unfinished is what happens when you put your performance into a soup of 50,000 other performances and on the other side create a unique performance that doesn’t look like what you guys created,” Maddaus says. “And that’s a problem for screenwriters. It’s a problem for actors. And basically, the studios didn’t agree to any restrictions on any of that[in 2023]. So from a screenwriter’s standpoint, from an actor’s standpoint, I think that’s the big unfinished business for 2023 and beyond. We’re used to training AI. How can they claim to have any control over the acting or the script? And right now, they don’t have any control over that. And I think they want that.” Having some control over that is one of the important things for SAG, and one of the important things for the WGA. ”
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