Studios and Writers to Resume Negotiations on Friday
The Writers Guild of America has now been on strike for over 100 days, but it looks like there is finally some progress toward putting an end to it. Matt Belloni, of Puck News, was first to post on social media that the studios will be resuming negotiations with the guild on Friday, August 11, at 2pm PT; The Hollywood Reporter quickly followed up with a detailed report on what this means and how this could play out.
If you’ve been following the development of the strike over these past couple of weeks, you may have heard that the studios set up a meeting with the writers last Friday to talk about talking, i.e., set a date for a potential return to the negotiating table. Things didn’t pan out really well, as Deadline reported on Saturday, because apparently, the studios asked for a media blackout coming out of the meeting, meaning that neither side would leak anything to the press that would be discussed inside the room. And yet, the WGA sent out an email to their members saying that the studios had broken that rule, so they had no reason to respect it either.
The general message on the writers’ side coming out of the meeting was that it was a smokescreen on the studio’s part and that the AMPTP wasn’t really interested in resuming negotiations in a meaningful way. Despite that, there are some indications elsewhere that the studios do want to reach a deal with the writers, and that may be easier to achieve with them than with the actors. Different trades reported that the studios are exploring back-door negotiating tactics, with entertainment lawyers on both sides having informal d about going back to the table. There’s also the issue of the studios looking at their fall schedule, and even next summer’s, and realizing they need all hands on deck to keep Wall Street happy — right now, all studios are considering massive delays that would leave movie theaters without titles to premiere after September/October; Sony even pushed back a few of their movies recently (though, as we explained in that article, it looks like some of them were just long-time coming even without the strike).
That the writers’ deal will be reached before the actors’ also is quite clear at this point, as the SAG-AFTRA public rhetoric has been a true call to arms, and different Hollywood insiders have pointed out that the studios were put off by that. That means they might be looking into reaching an agreement with the writers and hoping things calm down with the actors in doing so. After all, there are key points like streaming residuals and AI control that will have to be hammered out with the writers, and they can then bring them to the actors, while also having more leverage to reach a deal on other points.
So what are these key bullet points that need to be cleared out? In any negotiation, both sides will have to give up on some of the issues they are married to (go talk to any Succession character if you disagree with that). In this particular case, some indications from various trades seem to point to the AMPTP possibly agreeing on some sort of AI control, though whether it will be a full ban like the writers are clamoring for, or some overall guidelines like the actors were asking for, it’s still unclear. The financial side of the negotiations should also be easy to fulfill by the studios once both sides are able to reach some agreement on streaming metrics, something they might even disagree on between themselves.
But what it looks like the writers will have to budge on is the issue of hiring assembling writers’ rooms, mostly because it’s an issue even some writers inside the guild disagree on — basically it would mean that the studios must hire a minimum staff of writers to pen a series, and that number would be based on how many episodes have been ordered. Case in point: The Mandalorian would have to hire three or four additional writers, which Jon Favreau as creator and showrunner may not even favor.
For now, the fact that the studios want to get back on the table and that this new date is actually to negotiate and not to talk about when to resume negotiations is a good indicator. It’s very likely that over the past few weeks there have been some closed-door talks between reps from either side that culminated in this new meeting.
Stay tuned for more.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
