Hollywood CEOs Bob Iger of Disney and David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery each addressed the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike during their respective companies’ earnings results Wednesday, both expressing optimism that the work stoppage will end “soon” following the studios’ move to adjust AI language in its “last, best and final offer” to the actors union.
Ahead of Disney’s earnings call Wednesday afternoon, Iger said during a CNBC interview that the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA were “very hard at work trying to solve this” and noted those conversations to close a deal were happening “as we speak.”
“I have the utmost respect for actors,” Iger said. “They’re an incredibly important part of The Walt Disney Company for obvious reasons. And we’ve been hard at work — we, the companies, involved in this business as well as SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, in trying to figure out a way to get them back to work. And I can only say that I’m optimistic that we’ll figure that out relatively soon. In terms of the impact on the business, so far, it’s been negligible. Long-term meaning if the strike goes on much longer, it could become significant. Obviously, we’d like to try to preserve a summer of films. The entire industry is focused on that. We don’t have much time to do that.”
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO Zaslav opened the company’s quarterly earnings presentation Wednesday morning with remarks on the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, remaining “hopeful” that the work stoppage will end “soon.”
“We are hopeful we will reach a resolution to the SAG-AFTRA strike soon,” Zaslav said during WBD’s third-quarter earnings call Wednesday. “We made a last and final offer, which met virtually all of the union’s goals and includes the highest wage increase in 40 years and believe it provides for a positive outcome for all involved. We recognize that we need our creative partners to feel valued and rewarded and look forward to both sides getting back to the business of telling great stories. As the strikes underscore, these are challenging times our industry is facing accelerated disruption in a rapidly changing marketplace. And to succeed long term, we must be flexible and adaptable and have a strong arsenal of assets that will enable us to maintain momentum amidst ever evolving consumer behavior.”
As the SAG-AFTRA strike crosses its 118th day Wednesday, the industry-wide hope is that the latest movement on AI will be enough to seal the deal. The union’s negotiators met Monday night with the leaders of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and appeared to have resolved some of the pending issues on AI, which has become the central focus of the talks over the last week.
SAG-AFTRA leaders went into a meeting in the early afternoon Tuesday with the union’s negotiating committee. At 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, the committee informed members that it had met for 10 hours and would continue to talk on Wednesday. The committee also indicated that its deliberations are nearing an end.
As Zaslav referenced in his earnings remarks, this current offer includes a sizable bump in minimum rates, which the studios are labeling the largest increase in 40 years. The bump is expected to be 7% to 8% in most cases — shy of the 11% that the actors union asked for to account for inflation, but more than the 5% that the AMPTP agreed to in deals with the writers and directors unions.
Last week, HBO and Max chief Casey Bloys revealed multiple end-of-year programming adjustments made as a result of the strike, which Zaslav noted during the earnings call: “For the last couple of months we haven’t had our best content. We pushed off ‘True Detective’ because we couldn’t have Jodie Foster to promote it. And so you’ll see a very strong lineup next year.”
