SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have agreed to extend the current motion/picture TV contract “on a day-to-day basis,” according to a joint statement, in order to continue talks toward reaching a new master agreement.
Both sides announced at around 11 pm PDT on Friday (June 30)–just an hour or so before the current three-year contract was set to expire–that they “will continue to bargain.”
The announcement offers a ray of hope that was absent earlier in the week when SAG-AFTRA’s National Board of Directors voted unanimously to seek a strike authorization vote from its members due to a lack of progress on critical issues.
Ongoing talks will continue to operate under a formal news blackout agreed to by both parties.
The authors and screenwriters behind the film “Conclave” and the series “Say Nothing” won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards during a black-tie ceremony at USC’s Town and Gown ballroom on Saturday evening (2/22).
The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for “Conclave.”
In accepting the award, Straughan said, “Adaptation is a really strange process, you’re very much the servant of two masters. In a way it’s an act of betrayal of one master for the other.” He joked that “You start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,” crediting author Robert Harris for being “so kind, so generous, so open throughout.”
In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode “The People in the Dirt” from the limited series “Say Nothing,” which Zetumer adapted from Keefe’s nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.
Zetumer referenced this year’s extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying “projects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USC’s Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.”
Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. “If ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,” she said, “you have only to go to a... Read More
