The Brief

With the dual Hollywood strikes in motion, the news has been a bit of an alphabet soup lately. There’s SAG, the Screen Actors Guild; there’s WGA, the Writer’s Guild of America; and then there’s that more ambiguous mouthful: the AMPTP.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is the trade group for more than 350 studios and streamers who negotiate contracts with virtually all of the entertainment industry’s unions and guilds.

An insider joke told through the grapevine is that the AMPTP was formed to say "no." That’s obviously from the point of view of the unions, but the businesses are focused on protecting their bottom lines. So what exactly is this alliance and who’s in it?

What is the AMPTP?

The AMPTP is the ace up Hollywood’s sleeve. The alliance is full of lawyers and top studio and streamer executives who, in any other scenario, would be competitors, trying to elbow each other out of the way to secure the next big hit and make the most money.

But in the labor relations world, it’s a different story. Here, they team up to achieve a common goal: getting the best deal they can in hardline union negotiations to protect their bottom lines.

Some notable members are Paramount, Sony and Universal. And with the rise of streaming, Netflix, Apple TV and Amazon have also signed up. The alliance also represents studios that aren’t as big, like the independent production company A24.

The AMPTP usually stays out of the spotlight, quietly negotiating union contracts without much fuss. Most contracts are usually in place for three years, but each negotiation can start at different times. Here are some of the big unions they bargain with:

• American Federation of Musicians (AFM)
• Directors Guild of America (DGA)
• International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)
• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
• Laborers Local 724
• Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)
• Teamsters, Local #399
• Writers Guild of America (WGA)

According to the AMPTP, they negotiate 58 bargaining agreements overall. When the unions aren’t happy and they go on strike, that’s when the public hears about them most.

But being out of the spotlight doesn’t mean they aren’t doing anything. They’re also quietly involved in legislative affairs and big industry-wide issues.

Like you have with any corporate group, hob-nobbing with the politically powerful is like a secret menu item at In-N-Out. Everyone knows schmoozing is high on the agenda but it’s kept on the low.

Throughout the years that the collective of studios has been around, they’ve hosted princes, foreign governors and other dignitaries for studio tours, gala dinners and more.

A brief history of how the AMPTP formed

Let's go back to the beginning. A hundred years ago, when all we had were movies, workers were eager for better conditions.

In 1927, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences (which puts on the Oscars) was a young organization that wanted to find a way to stop employees from unionizing. Executives devised a plan to keep unions out that first involved a banquet, and industry workers getting invited to join the organization. Over time, more people joined and labor disputes were handled in-house.

Eventually, workers across the industry unionized and the Academy’s leadership was faced with a fight it didn’t want. So, it handed off the ball. It turned to the much smaller Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP) (we know, it’s dizzying), which had been formed a few years earlier to manage the industry’s representation in public and government. Although it only had a handful of big names, like Columbia Pictures, Universal and Warner Brothers, it eventually took over the responsibility for negotiations in the mid-1930s.

A crowd of film technicians assembled at the Paramount Pictures gate, waiting to go back to their jobs on August 26, 1933. The union called off the strike as a result of a settlement reached by the NRA labor chiefs in Washington.

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Courtesy of Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

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Over the decades, more members joined. And then, television happened. In 1960, the WGA and SAG went on strike over giving writers and actors residuals when their movies were shown on TV, shutting down Hollywood. The TV producers had their own trade group — the Alliance of Television Film Producers — but in 1964, they merged with the AMPP.

The collective group was renamed the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (yep, that was AMPTP too). The choice was likely a way to consolidate power should another labor dispute threaten widescale Hollywood production.

Independent producers joined the ranks a couple years later and slowly over time, more and more companies came together to build up the strong labor relations group.

But they weren’t always unified. Universal and Paramount quit the trade group for a time in the 1970s, and so did Walt Disney productions. Paramount and Universal, which were some of the oldest members of the AMPP when it began, left and formed their own labor relations group called the Alliance.

But time is a flat circle, and in 1982, they all merged to form the AMPTP (second time’s a charm?). And although streamers have joined the ranks in recent years, the acronym seems to be sticking this time.