The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents major film and television studios including Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, and others, stated on Monday that they had offered Hollywood actors over $1 billion in increased compensation and improved benefits before the recent strike called by the SAG-AFTRA union. They claimed that SAG-AFTRA was misrepresenting the negotiations.

Following the inability of union negotiators to reach an agreement with studios on a new three-year contract with improved benefits and restrictions on the use of their images by artificial intelligence, SAG-AFTRA called for a strike last Thursday. Responding to this, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) stated that the deal, which SAG-AFTRA turned down on July 12, encompassed wage increases, contributions to pension and health plans, and residual increases, amounting to over $1 billion. The AMPTP emphasized that the proposed agreement also included unprecedented safeguards specifically related to artificial intelligence over the three-year duration of the contract.

The AMPTP responded to SAG-AFTRA's claims by stating that for the union to suggest that they have not been attentive to the needs of its members is, at best, insincere. In a separate development on Monday, SAG-AFTRA, which represents over 160,000 actors, stunt performers, and others, released a detailed list of its proposals and the studios' purported responses, emphasizing that they are fighting for the preservation of their profession.

One of SAG-AFTRA's requests highlighted in the list was an 11% general wage increase in the first year of the contract to account for inflation. The union stated that the studios offered a counterproposal of 5%.

According to SAG-AFTRA, they made some concessions during the negotiations, but the studios were unresponsive and did not engage constructively on the key matters at hand. This implies that the studios did not address the most critical issues satisfactorily, according to the union's perspective.

Additionally, the actors have joined forces with members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who initiated their strike on May 2 after failing to reach an agreement with the AMPTP.