On today’s “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Gene Maddaus breaks down the issues and the schedule for Hollywood union contract negotiations that are set to begin Feb. 9 when SAG-AFTRA sits down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. AI, health care benefits and streaming residuals will surely be on the agenda.
AI is sure to be a flashpoint again for the union negotiations, just as it was in 2023. And that marketplace has grown by leaps and bounds over the past three years. The hubbub last year around a producer’s effort to hype the potential of a “synthetic” actress named Tilly Norwood will surely fuel SAG-AFTRA to push for more protections and promises of compensation for living, breathing thespians.
“Hollywood unions we saw the Tilly Norwood thing which was, 95% hype, but there was 5% of substance to it. And that caused a lot of concern. And then obviously the Disney OpenAI [license deal struck in December]. And when you look into the details of that, they consciously, liberally carved around the rights that SAG-AFTRA secured for itself last time and made sure that, we’re not going to do likenesses and we’re not going to do human representations, and it’s all going to be animated characters,” Maddaus says. “But still, if that takes off, if that becomes a thing that people enjoy doing with Darth Vader and Yoda and so on, why wouldn’t they try to expand it to the things that involve recognizable human actors. That’s getting into a territory that’s obviously a very major concern for a lot of actors of like, Am I competing with myself?”
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