It shouldn't have come to this. After five meetings over 10 days between four of Hollywood's top CEOs and the leaders of the Screen Actors Guild, it was supposed to be down to the wire for a deal.
Instead, SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher touched a frayed nerve with the CEOs, principally Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, according to multiple insiders who spoke to TheWrap.
The guild had returned to the negotiating room at SAG headquarters in West Hollywood with a new ask: Instead of demanding a 1% levy on all streaming revenue, the guild was demanding a flat $1 per subscriber, per year fee.
This was an unusual first-dollar revenue share regardless of profit or any individual contributions to the success of any show, much less a company. The money would go to the guild itself rather than individual actors on any show — and the union would decide how to distribute.
The CEOs had already
rejected the idea of revenue sharing in principle as untenable for their business model. But in their view, it was back.
"On what basis would you do that?" Zaslav pressed.
Drescher deflected. "Think how much better actors' lives will be," she said.
And she said what the CEOs took to be a threat: that if she did not get this benefit for her members, it would be back to the strike lines for all. SAG-AFTRA has been on the picket lines since the strike began, but the threat seemed to indicate a robust showing along the lines of the vociferous presence of WGA members throughout the summer.
This subscriber proposal
made no sense to CEOs Zaslav, Sarandos, Disney CEO Bob Iger and NBCUniversal's Studio Group Chairman Donna Langley. They felt they had already offered significant raises to actors in their negotiations up to that point, and that a flat levy to the guild on their subscription revenue was, as Sarandos later put it, a bridge too far.
They also worried they'd need to give a similar deal to other guilds, which would cost even more in a portion of the industry – streaming – where most studios are losing money.
It was an economic model they could not accept.
After they left the negotiating room, Sarandos called his peers to circle up: the studio heads agreed that they were done talking.
"We're not a socialist country," said an individual on the studio side. "We said, 'This is crazy.' It made no sense."
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bytch wtf you doing?" While the studios walk out the door because you got greedy
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