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TELFAZ11 Commits to 9 Productions at NEOM Over Next 3 Years

The collaboration between NEOM and TELFAZ11 will accelerate the growth of NEOM’s media industries ecosystem
The collaboration between NEOM and TELFAZ11 will accelerate the growth of NEOM’s media industries ecosystem
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TELFAZ11 Commits to 9 Productions at NEOM Over Next 3 Years

The collaboration between NEOM and TELFAZ11 will accelerate the growth of NEOM’s media industries ecosystem
The collaboration between NEOM and TELFAZ11 will accelerate the growth of NEOM’s media industries ecosystem

Saudi Arabia’s NEOM and TELFAZ11 have announced a key partnership to create up to nine TV and film productions over the next three years, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The collaboration between NEOM and TELFAZ11 will accelerate the growth of NEOM’s media industries ecosystem, ensuring a rich pipeline of productions, including two feature films and one series currently in development under the new arrangement, SPA said.

Saturday’s announcement follows a recent drumbeat of high-profile TELFAZ11 successes, including the debut of its latest theatrical feature film ‘Sattar,’ which has become the highest-grossing Saudi film to date.

In addition to productions, TELFAZ11 plans to establish a physical presence at NEOM by opening offices in NEOM’s media hub this year. This new office will complement TELFAZ11’s existing offices in Riyadh and Dubai. NEOM will also leverage TELFAZ11’s new NEOM offices to diversify its industry learning activities and multi-disciplinary talent development programs, creating a vibrant talent pool across the value chain and vital career pathways for graduates.

“Our mission is to create a new world-class media hub at NEOM, one that supports the region’s industry to compete and succeed globally. This partnership with TELFAZ11 complements and accelerates this partnership, coupled with our evolving infrastructure, crew depth, industry learning programs, and highly competitive incentive scheme, showing we are well on our way to achieving these goals,” said Wayne Borg, Managing Director of Media Industries, Entertainment, and Culture at NEOM.

Alaa Faden, CEO and Co-Founder of TELFAZ11 said that TELFAZ11 has consistently operated on the leading edge of innovation.

NEOM has provided the backdrop for 30 productions in the last 18 months, including Rupert Wyatt’s ‘Desert Warrior’, starring Anthony Mackie and Sir Ben Kingsley; ‘Dunki’ directed by Rajkumar Hirani and starring Shah Rukh Khan; local acclaimed Saudi feature ‘Within Sand’ directed by Moe Alatawi; the first regional reality TV show ‘Million Dollar Island;’ and ‘Rise of The Witches’, the region’s biggest-ever budget TV show. MBC’s ‘Exceptional,’ a 200-episode-per-year TV drama series, is set to begin shooting in July.

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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a "performer" is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

"The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement," SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as "data."

Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

"We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can," Rodriguez told reporters. "We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now."

Cooling said the companies' offer "extends meaningful AI protections."

"We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations," she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union's negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies' offer.

"The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier," Norris said. "We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer."

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 "off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers," according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.