George Clooney, Other A-Listers Meets With SAG-AFTRA Leaders After Studio Talks Fell Apart
The SAG-AFTRA On Tuesday, George Clooney meets with SAG-AFTRA leaders to try to learn more about what went wrong with contract talks on October 11.
Author:Paula M. GrahamReviewer:Rhyley CarneyOct 19, 202314.9K Shares331.9K Views
The SAG-AFTRA On Tuesday, George Clooney meets with SAG-AFTRA leadersto try to learn more about what went wrong with contract talks on October 11.
Clooney used Zoom to talk to union president Fran Drescher and union national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland about why studios stopped talking the week before. Deadlinewas the first to tell the news. They also said that Scarlett Johansson, Emma Stone, Ben Affleck, and Tyler Perry, who are all union members, were at the meeting.
George Clooney Meets With SAG-AFTRA Leaders
Well-known people are joining the SAG-AFTRA strike. Deadline says that George Clooney met with the heads of his union on Tuesday to talk about what happened when talks between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP broke down on October 11.
It is said that Clooney talked on Zoom with SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher and top negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland about why talks between the studios and the actors' union broke down. Clooney has been very active in the strike. Earlier this summer, he gave $1 million to the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.
Emma Stone, Ben Affleck, and Tyler Perry were among the other famous people who were at the meeting. The actors reportedly wanted to talk most about the revenue-sharing proposals that the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee brought to the attention of the AMPTP and the four studio chiefs who were present at the October 11 meeting. They were David Zaslav from Discovery, Ted Sarandos from Netflix, Donna Langley from NBCUniversal, and Bob Iger from Disney.
People have said that the tone was "supportive," but the stars didn't just call the meeting to show support. Several sources say that the A-listers are a big part of the guild's dissatisfaction that talks have broken down. They want to find a way to start talks again and end the strike.
Perry has hundreds of employees at his Atlanta studio, and he has been worried for weeks that he won't be able to start making music again.
One person said that the group, which also includes Emma Stone and Ben Affleck, gave Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland a "presentation." It was planned that the leaders would meet with the SAG-AFTRA Negotiating Committee on Wednesday afternoon before giving an answer.
There is a lot of pressure on both sides of the table and on the whole business, which is still mostly shut down even though contracts with both the directors' and writers' guilds have been resolved. Since July, the actors have been on strike. Since they can't work, the TV season and studios' ability to sell and open their holiday movies responsibly are both at great risk.
That being said, Clooney is no new to Screen Actors Guild politics. In December 2008, he was one of many famous people who told SAG members to vote against authorizing a strike. They said that the weak economy made it a bad time to shut down the industry. The union, which had not yet merged with AFTRA, eventually took back the vote to authorize a strike.
This cycle, the players' union has been much more united, though there have been times when tensions have been felt within the union.
From the start of the talks, Drescher has promised to get players a "seminal" deal. She and Crabtree-Ireland made a video at the end of June in which she was positive about the talks and said they were "extremely productive."
That led to an open letter from another group of famous people, including Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, telling leadership to be tough in talks and saying that “members may be ready to make sacrifices that leadership is not.”
After the talks were pushed back, SAG-AFTRA went on strike on July 14. It has now been longer than the strike in 1980, which ran 95 days.
Final Words
On Tuesday, October 17, George Clooney and other stars met with SAG-AFTRA leaders to talk about why contract talks broke down on October 11.
News outlets say that the 62-year-old Ocean's Eleven star talked on Zoom with guild president Fran Drescher and union national executive director and top negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. There were also Scarlett Johansson, Emma Stone, Ben Affleck, and Tyler Perry at the meeting.
The actors were especially interested in more money from The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and the four major studio CEOs who were in the talks: David Zaslav from Warner Bros. Discovery, Ted Sarandos from Netflix, Donna Langley from NBCUniversal, and Bob Iger from Disney.
Paula M. Graham
Author
Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
Latest Articles
Popular Articles