Catherwood LibraryILR School

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Association of Talent Agents (ATA) reached a tentative settlement in negotiations that will modify an agreement in perpetuity that has stood unchanged since 1939, and will itself expire in 2005. The proposed agreement will allow talent agencies to except up to twenty percent of their investment capital from independent production companies and advertising firms---prohibited by the 1939 agreement as a source of potential conflicts of interest---while continuing the ban on investment in talent agencies by movie studios and television networks, their parent companies, an parent companies? subsidiaries. The new agreement is part of a planned partnership between the union and talent agencies that would see talent agencies taking a larger role in ensuring protection of actors? incomes and preventing runaway productions (See WIT for Dec. 5, 2002).