Striking Hollywood actors resume contract talks with studios, networks By Reuters

By Steve Gorman and Daybreak Chmielewski

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Negotiators for hanging Hollywood actors resumed contract talks on Monday with representatives of main studios, tv networks and streaming companies, marking the primary time the 2 sides have returned to the bargaining desk since mid-July.

Renewed talks between the SAG-AFTRA actors union and the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers (AMPTP) got here eight days after the producers clinched a separate contract cope with Hollywood writers, who launched their very own strike on Could 2, about 10 weeks earlier than the actors.

“SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP met for a full day bargaining session and have concluded,” the 2 sides mentioned in a joint assertion on the finish of the day. It mentioned negotiations would resume on Wednesday.

No additional particulars have been instantly out there. Either side agreed to look at a information “blackout” throughout their talks.

The tentative accord reached Sept. 24 between the producers and the 11,500-member Writers Guild of America not solely paved the best way for ending their labor dispute three days later, it might function a template for settling the actors strike.

SAG-AFTRA, Hollywood’s largest union, representing 160,000 tv and movie performers, walked off the job on July 14 demanding larger base wages and residual pay from streaming TV in addition to restrictions on the usage of synthetic intelligence (AI) in leisure.

The identical points have been on the heart of the writers strike.

Within the space of synthetic intelligence, actors wish to shield their photographs and work from being changed by computer-generated “digital replicas.”

On the similar time, they’re in search of compensation that displays the worth they convey to the comparatively new frontier of streaming, particularly within the type of income sharing.

Different calls for from actors embody limits on self-taped auditions utilized in casting, which they argue are extra expensive to them than in-person readings. In addition they demanding assurances of larger racial fairness on the set, together with provision of hair and make-up artists able to working with assorted hair textures and pores and skin tones.

The resumption of contract talks between the actors and studios additionally coincided with community tv’s late-night hosts – Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel – bringing their reveals again to tv on Monday. Comic John Oliver returned to HBO’s “Final Week Tonight” on Sunday.