Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture.
Suspense hangs over whether SAG-AFTRA could reach an agreement with the studios this week, as the union passed its June 30 contract deadline and extended the talks to July 12. The next few days could determine the future of the business, but the situation has only escalated in the last week with an unexpected update.
The last thing SAG-AFTRA’s 160,000 members needed to see was the smiling face of Fran Drescher. When SAG chairman and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland circulated a dizzying update June 23 on an upcoming deal — one with no details, beyond offering that would be “seminal” — didn’t catalyze the reaction they wanted. Rather than see members encourage his efforts, union leaders received a urgent open letter signed by the group’s A-list members.
“We are ready to strike if it comes to this,” they wrote in a letter signed by more than 300 people in less than 72 hours, including Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Ben Stiller. “We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and our union power have been undermined over the past decade. We have to reserve those trajectories… This is not the time to meet in the middle.
In other words: stop mugging for the camera and get to work. SAG members are ready to strike not just to make a point, but also because they know it could produce results the current WGA strike cannot do on its own.
“I really think that video was the impetus for the letter,” an actor who signed it told me this week, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I think everyone feels the heat. We should at least demonstrate that we are willing to go on strike for leverage. What will directors direct if there is no one to write or act?
SAG’s decision, whether it’s a strike, a transformative deal that disrupts the system, or one that sees only modest gains, could impact the next decade or more. The syndicate has the power to rewrite the Hollywood economy through a major disruption or, to settle for an outcome that puts them at an extreme disadvantage as the residuals fade into the streaming ether.
There are also real concerns about AI — how actors can retain the rights to their likeness, now that the technology exists to make them perform after death — but most SAG members I know say they are less involved in those conversations; they want an arrangement that will help them maintain a stable profession. “A strike will suck, sure,” a prominent actor wrote me this week, “but it’s amazing how many movies I’ve had on streamers, and I don’t get a dime for any of them.”
As I’ve been asking around this week, the word “existential” has come up more than once. Another signatory to the open letter, an actor who has worked in the studio since the 1980s, wrote to me: “We are in crisis. If the deal doesn’t go well, many people will be forced out of the business. I see it as a national job crisis, not just our business. It is the collision between big tech and oligarchs dismantling equal pay and protections.”
In previous negotiations, SAG was badly burned. In August 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the SAG-AFTRA health plan suddenly barred anyone over 65, eliminating thousands of older performers.
“I know actors in their 70s who are retired and making a living off their residuals because they’ve been working for 50 years or more, but they no longer have health insurance,” one actor told me. “I had friends on the negotiating committee who defended themselves by saying, ‘Well, the AMPTP won’t give us health insurance because they’re bullies!’ Which is absolutely true, but I’m sorry, you can’t let them. You don’t leave the table until they agree to pay for this stuff.
A strike would put many people out of work, but it also has a good chance of shattering the resolve of the studios. Consider what happened when the WGA prosecuted agencies for intrusive packing fees in 2020. Instead of relying on a single negotiating body like the AMPTP, the writers’ guild had to work through each of the big three talent agencies – WME, CAA and UTA – to reach an agreement that would eliminate packaging costs. It was a messy and piecemeal operation that left a lot open to interpretation and agents are still looking for workarounds that line their pockets. But it happened.
Since we can’t discern the details of what the studios and actors want, we’re guessing that one of the major disruptive streamers — cough, Netflix — may have less investment in an out-of-the-box deal than any other studio.
Apple and Amazon, the world’s largest companies, could certainly be moving towards a new financial reality around residuals that keeps players happy without feeling like it’s destabilizing the bottom line. Only Netflix has hinted that it could limp more or less intact in the midst of a debilitating strike. And it’s true: Netflix can create a pipeline of low-budget unscripted and library content, doubling down on international acquisitions, docuseries and productions.
Legacy studios aren’t built that way; they were forced to stream games to keep up with the competition. They need the talent business and they don’t want to lose that foothold.
So… perhaps other studios could break ranks and speak directly to SAG to resolve their needs. The result may not satisfy all contingencies, but it would allow for some semblance of forward momentum. Some actors have told me they would be happier with this scattered outcome than fighting against a single entity indifferent to their needs.
“I don’t think Netflix should have joined the AMPTP,” a SAG insider told me. “They want to influence everyone to do what they’re doing because they’re on top of the world.”
And it could stay that way, regardless of the agreements that emerge from the ongoing negotiations. If traditional Hollywood turned its back on the streamer, this cinephile would surely embrace a new economic reality that has forced Netflix to become the leading distributor of international storytelling. Buy all the hits of the festival. Invest in authors from all over the world. Everyone wins!
OK, too idealistic, but there are no rules that require SAG to only do a deal through AMPTP. The WGA’s negotiating tactics have obscured this reality because its demands remain difficult for any studio to meet, particularly regarding the minimum number of writers they want in a writers room. I bet more studios want to reach agreement for streaming residuals than AMPTP as a whole, and taking that out of the equation would almost certainly produce better results.
There is no guarantee that something like this will happen if SAG goes on strike. Still, it’s the kind of chance that makes a strike feasible if the actors can’t get a good deal done now.
Then again, consider the sunnier possibility. Perhaps Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland projected confidence in their video update because real progress is being made. The ‘The Nanny’ star could be close to negotiating a deal that puts the acting profession on a positive path for the next decade or more.
Such an outcome could at least create a roadmap for the WGA to see a way through its own conundrum in the near future. No one should hold their breath on that front, but one thing is clear: These negotiations will not end with a video, but with a vision. If the SAG leadership does not foresee it, its members will have to fill the gaps.
As usual, I invite feedback to this weekly column: eric@indiewire.com
Last week I wrote about the changing of the guard at TCM and his perilous situation at WarnerMedia Discovery. Here are some of the responses I received:
It seems to me that with all the creative people treasuring TCM we should be able to find a way to save it from the daily monetization pressures all networks experience. … Traditional Chinese Medicine has been integral to maintaining the history of America through the eyes of cinema. It’s almost like PBS – and perhaps should be funded in an alternative way where it’s not subject to the whims of studio executives who are strictly interested in the bottom line. I see TCM as a cultural treasure. I imagine that with the monetary support of filmmakers, actors, and philanthropists, as well as a structure that removes TCM from the competitive marketplace – and perhaps views it more as an educational conduit – TCM can be saved without being brought down.
—a TCM subscriber
Your article is a perfect distillation of what our future needs. You speaking for TCM means a lot to all of us.
—a current TCM staff member
