Fran Drescher pictured at a press convention. (Image courtesy: AFP)

Los Angeles:

Hollywood actors had been “duped” into extending negotiations for 2 weeks by studios who wished extra time to advertise their summer time blockbuster films, union president Fran Drescher informed AFP on Thursday.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) final month postponed their preliminary strike deadline, within the hope of beating out a take care of the likes of Netflix and Disney over calls for for higher pay and extra safety towards synthetic intelligence.

That extension didn’t yield any progress in talks, which collapsed on Wednesday night time, with the union representing some 160,000 performers calling a strike for midnight Thursday (0700 GMT Friday.)

“We, in good faith, gave them an extension, with the hope that they would make deep inroads, and we would really have something to discuss,” Drescher, the star and co-creator of Nineteen Nineties sitcom The Nanny, informed AFP.

“But we were duped. They stayed behind closed doors, they kept canceling our meetings, wasting time.”

“It was probably all to have more time to promote their summer movies. Because nothing came out of it that was significant.”

During that two-week interval, main premieres have been held all over the world for summer time blockbuster films together with Warner’s “Barbie,” Universal’s “Oppenheimer” and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

SAG-AFTRA guidelines stop actors from selling their films and exhibits throughout a strike.

Had the strike begun earlier, stars akin to Tom Cruise, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling would have needed to skip glitzy crimson carpet occasions – a key software utilized by studios to drum up publicity and, hopefully, field workplace receipts.

Red-carpet premieres set for the following few weeks at the moment are being canceled, akin to Paramount’s Special Ops: Lioness, or scaled again, like Disney’s Haunted Mansion..

“I actually was surprised. But I think that I may have been naive, because this was my first big negotiation,” mentioned Drescher, elected SAG-AFTRA president in 2021.

“I really thought that we could come to a meeting of the minds. That they could see how dramatically this new business model has been foisted upon the entire industry,” she mentioned, referring to the modifications wrought by streaming.

One of actors’ major grievances considerations the drop-off in funds often called residuals.

The substantial sums that performers used to obtain when profitable exhibits or movies that they had starred in had been rerun on tv have all-but disappeared, as a result of streamers right now refuse to reveal their viewers figures.

Instead, streamers pay the identical flat fee for all packages obtainable on their platforms, which might imply a tiny return for a worldwide smash hit.

“It’s just crazy to me, that they wouldn’t want to sit down and say, ‘we need to bring you into this in an honorable and respectful way, so you can live with this significant change,'” mentioned Drescher.

“The truth of the matter is, they didn’t do that.”

Despite her frustration with the studios, Drescher insisted that SAG-AFTRA’s “door is open to continue negotiations.”

“The strike is not the end, it’s just the next step. We would love to continue to negotiate with him. But the ball is in their court.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)