Hollywood’s waiting game isn’t over yet as SAG-AFTRA and studios failed to reach a deal on Sunday, the final day of their primary negotiations period.
The negotiations over the union’s next three-year deal covering film and TV work are now set to continue later this spring ahead of the contract’s June 30 expiration. SAG-AFTRA had previously scheduled this backup period for additional talks in case their first didn’t yield an agreement, which now seems prescient.
The announcement arrived just before the Writers Guild of America is set to begin its own negotiations with the AMPTP on Monday. SAG-AFTRA was the first major union to head into bargaining with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in 2026. During the last bargaining cycle, of course, the union and the WGA each waged a strike for more than 100 days, crippling the industry in the process.
“SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP completed productive bargaining sessions, including going several days beyond what was originally planned. While we will continue ongoing conversations, formal negotiations will resume later this spring as planned, before the current contract expires June 30,” the union and the AMPTP said in a joint statement on Sunday.
The performers’ union began its negotiations on Feb. 9 under the leadership of national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. New AMPTP president Gregory Hessinger led talks for the studios and streamers. On March 6, the parties announced that they had agreed to extend contract negotiations one week more than originally planned.
As a sprawling labor group representing principal performers, background actors, dancers and singers among others, SAG-AFTRA had a broad range of priorities at the bargaining table this year. One of its top issues is generative AI, which has rapidly evolved in the three years since SAG-AFTRA negotiated its initial contract language covering the technology. Crabtree-Ireland has already said that he wants to make performers generated by AI as expensive as humans.
Another major concern is boosting income for members. “People need their wages; they’re having a hard time qualifying for health care. They need cost-of-living, inflation [adjustments]. People need to make more money,” union president Sean Astin previously told THR.
