Screen Actors Guild may reconsider games deal

The board of the Screen Actors Guild is to hold a special meeting on Wednesday to discuss the deadlock it faces over a deal negotiated with the videogames industry, which was rejected last week by the union's national executive committee.

The unprecedented rejection has left the SAG in a tough position, especially since the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists agreed to the deal and is now ready to move ahead with the games companies involved in negotiating it - including Electronic Arts and Activision.

The board is now expected to review the decision of the national executive committee, and may take the unusual step of overruling it. In order to enable this, the games companies have extended the deadline for agreement to June 30th from June 25th.

The sticking point in the negotiations is the question of residuals - additional payments which would be made to actors once games pass a certain sales milestone. Effectively a form of profit-sharing for actors, residuals were strongly resisted by game publishers and were removed from the final deal, which does however offer a significant payrise and improved conditions for game actors.

"When the NEC rejected the tentative contract earlier this week, we said we'd explore all of our remaining options," SAG national executive director Greg Hessinger told the Hollywood Reporter.

"Since then, we have received feedback from enough of our membership to conclude that this matter must be brought before the full board for its consideration," he said.