UPDATED: NBCUniversal content chief Donna Langley has vowed that the top executives involved in contract negotiations with SAG-AFTRA will devote the time it takes to reach a new deal. But two hours after Langley spoke, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said it would “suspend” talks with SAG-AFTRA, saying that the sides are too far apart on contract terms and that “conversations are no longer moving us in a productive direction.”
Langley, who is chairman of NBCUniversal Studio Group and chief content officer of NBCUniversal, declined to say much about the state of talks with the performers union during her Q&A Wednesday evening at Bloomberg Media’s Screentime conference in Hollywood.
But Langley did express that her executive counterparts in the negotiating room — Disney’s Bob Iger, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav– are committed to bringing an end to the SAG-AFTRA work stoppage that began July 14.
“The best way I can say it: We’ve been spending time with the actors and we want to spend as much time as it takes until we can reach a resolution and get the industy back on its feet and back to work,” Langley said.
Langley, Sarandos, Iger and Zaslav have been knee-deep in union contract negotiations for the past month. The foursome came together in August to help jumpstart stalled negotiations with the Writers Guild of America. WGA negotiators met with the executives and negotiators for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers last month and ultimately reached a deal on Sept. 24. That three-year deal was ratified with overwhelming approval by members on Monday.
“We feel good about the deal that was made,” Langley said. Negotiations with the WGA proved to be “a difficult one because we had to deal with issues like AI and minimum staffing and things that had up until this point seemed unprecedented,” she said. “Eventually we made a deal.”
More to come