The strike is over. Apparently we found out Sagaftra has ended the strike after 118 days after their leaders agreed to a new contract, which, interestingly, came just a couple of days after the last best and final offer from the movie studios. [00:00:17] Turns out that might have just been a tactic. But anyway, they've put out this announcement that they have arrived at a contract that will enable members of Sagaftra from every category to build sustainable careers. Full details will be provided eventually, but are not here. [00:00:33] And obviously the devil might well be in the details. And this thing is not necessarily totally finalized. We'll have to see what everybody, including the membership, thinks about all this, but we have some vague ideas of what the contract includes. So we're gonna tell you those to give you our reaction. So the new contract will include, quote, above pattern minimum compensation [00:00:53] increases so some more money, which could mean a lot of different things, unprecedented provisions that will protect members from the threat of AI. We actually have more on that and we will dive into that cuz that's the part of this that has always been most interesting to me. A new streaming participation bonus, which does not sound like royalties. [00:01:15] It sounds like a one time thing, but we don't know. Participation means bonus, but a bonus could be a one time thing, whereas royalties theoretically pay out for a very long period of time, I don't know. Substantially raise caps on union pension, health plans, that sounds good. [00:01:34] Pay raises for background performers. That's good considering one of the AI concerns was background performers being entirely replaced by digital simulacra and critical contract provisions protecting diverse communities. [00:01:49] Again, that could mean a lot of things we don't exactly know. So we are going to dive into the AI thing, but it sounds like they've gotten some more money, some more protections. Bret, what do you think about this? Obviously, barring actual detals. >> Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of folks were saying with the writers, the AI wasn't as big a deal, but with the actors, [00:02:07] it was more of a big deal because they were explicitly saying, yeah, we're just gonna put together AI versions of you and own that forever. Your likeness is gonna be worth nothing. But that's bad. But it's good that they got something they felt confident in [00:02:24] signing on to, and it was way overdue. Everybody who is using, if you cut your cord, if you have sat and waited for two months to see if something comes out on streaming, if you're excited that something comes out on streaming instead of going to a theatrical release. [00:02:41] Then you know exactly what not only the studios, but definitely the actors and writers are facing. If you're like, my God, why aren't that? We used to have 22 episodes of the office in one season. We only have eight. I hate having to wait a year. Yes, so do the writers, so do the actors. [00:02:57] And this was all a way for them to get the compensation to make life easier for them and make it more just how they're getting paid [INAUDIBLE]. >> Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I guess to be fully transparent, my wife is a member of Sagaftra. [00:03:13] A lot of my friends, including people I had in depth conversations right on the precipice of this happening, are in different elements of these ongoing strikes. But it seems really bad in a lot of ways in comparison to ten years, let alone 20 years ago, for both the actors and [00:03:28] the writers and hopefully this will rebalance things. I don't know, I don't know about the money. The compensation for both writers and actors in terms of royalties for streaming, which has pushed out so much of the traditional royalty structure, I don't know. The AI stuff, though, is just the wildest. [00:03:46] They literally wanted to be able to scan you once and then just use you forever after you're dead. When you're alive, after you're dead, just use you. I'm not a member of the union, let alone their leadership, but that's the sort of thing where I would question whether negotiations could even work, [00:04:04] because that is, from a corporate sense, to me, utterly sociopathic. That you would believe that any of that is acceptable, that you could take one of your actors, they die, and you tell their family to kick rocks, you're gonna put them in movies for the rest of time. >> Speaker 2: As opposed to the old set up where it's like, [00:04:20] let me just wait 70 years, and then you're public domain. >> Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, but that has never existed at a time where you could reliably CGI a person really. >> Speaker 2: I'm just talking about making money off dead people. >> Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, 100%. [00:04:36] But it just seems so utterly weird. Their end goal was so clear. Their end goal was not to produce better people to fill the bleachers in one scene. I know that was going around. They want to replace actors utterly. [00:04:51] They don't wanna have to have actors, because actors are wildly expensive, and it would be easier to be able to just create their own actors, put them into movies that they would wholly own. That they could then edit in post, adding scenes, changing dialogue. They find humans to be really inconvenient. [00:05:08] And so while the money is super important. I really hope that those protections against AI are really robust, both for them and for the writers, because humans are traditionally a big part of this entire process of creating art. But the corporations do not want humans involved in any area except maybe [00:05:27] the executives, and I think you seem to be really worried about that. But anyway, they say they've gotten some good protections, including the ability for actors to allow for their images to be used for just a single project that had previously not been a part of this. [00:05:42] If you ever allowed it for anything, it could be used for whatever. But it seems like a hellscape coming up with the future bright is what it seems like. >> Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. A lot of boiler this said, a lot of boilerplate contracts in Hollywood have the words throughout the universe in perpetuity everywhere. [00:06:02] And it's great to have these set down as ways to get around or to prevent that from happening in the future. >> Speaker 1: Imagine if they said, hey, Brett, TYT scanned you. Now we're just gonna happy half hour for the rest of time. There's nothing you can do about it. [00:06:18] That is wild and not a bad idea. [MUSIC]