WGA Says Studios Have Expressed Them in Private They Want a Deal
It’s been a quiet couple of weeks on the strike front, but there might be a good reason for that. After the WGA rejected the studios’ offer from August 11, the companies inside the AMPTP held a meeting to clarify their positions and put together a united front — there have been rumors for many weeks of internal disagreements between the studios. The writers’ guild sent out a memo to members on Friday confirming as much.
In the memo, which was also distributed to the press (via Deadline), the WGA negotiating committee, led by Ellen Stutzman, David A. Goodman, and Chris Keyser, said that they’ve been holding private conversations with executives from some of the legacy studios, who have expressed them their desire to reach a deal that the writers will feel comfortable with and to get the situation resolved. No specifics were given, but they said that “on every single issue we are asking for we have had at least one legacy studio executive tell us they could accommodate us.”
No specific names were given, but we can sort of read between the lines and see that Netflix could be indeed one of the companies preventing a deal from being reached — in particular, we know they are especially not happy with the idea of opening up the books and letting people see what their subscribers are watching (or, in turn, not watching). But what does Paramount Plus or Peacock have to lose there? Nobody’s subscribed to those services anyways, so do Brian Robbins at Paramount or Dona Langley at Universal really want to put production on pause because of that issue? Even Prime Video and Apple TV Plus are probably flies on the wall during these meetings, as their platforms are essentially a rounding error for their parent companies and they would rather keep their creatives happy.
David Zaslav (Warner Bros. Discovery) and Bob Iger (Disney) remain big uncertainties here. They both have made harsh comments towards the WGA and SAG-AFTRA (although Zaslav seems to be toning it down lately) and have appeared next to Netflix’s Ted Sarandos on several trade reports about meetings between the studios and the AMPTP with the WGA. But they both need to get the creative juices flowing down those pipelines and start putting out movies to make some actual money next year. Disney needs titles to premiere on Disney Plus after they raised the price of the service by $3 as a quick way to draw in more revenue — but we know since the Great Netflix Correction that customers are not afraid to click on “Unsubscribe” if they are not satisfied.
The statement also comes on the heels of Warner Bros. Discovery announcing they will be taking a hit of $300M-$500M this year because of the strike, which SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating leader Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said today would be enough to subsidize the actors’ entire proposal for three years. In that WBD regulatory filing, it was also revealed that the company’s free cash flow will be up by the end of the year, as they are not spending money because everything is halted — this is especially important because Zaslav’s end-of-year bonus is directly tied to this metric, which means he will be getting a lot of zeros on his bank account soon.
It’s unclear what the next move is here. It’s possible that one of these companies will sign a deal outside of the AMPTP banner, leaving the door open for others to follow and reducing the studios’ bargaining power. It’s also possible that the studios decide the writers are a nut too hard to crack and they go back to the actors, so they can at least have some talent promoting their fall and awards movies. Or maybe they realize they are in deep trouble if they don’t hold a united front and decide to make an offer the writers can engage with. (It should be noted that the WGA did send a counterproposal to the studios’ Aug. 11 offer, but the AMPTP dismissed it entirely.)
Here is the full statement by the WGA negotiating committee:
“We know that people are anxious for information about the status of the negotiation – and how difficult it can be to stay strong during periods of silence – which is only exacerbated by the companies’ recent attempts to make an end run around the Negotiating Committee and confuse the narrative. What follows is an update on where we are and how we got here. We share things we have not shared up until now, including conversations with individual executives that illustrate how some of the companies can already see a path toward making a deal, while other members of the AMPTP are not there yet.
“In the 130 days since the WGA strike began, the AMPTP has only offered one proposal to the WGA, on August 11th. Since then, the companies have not moved off that proposal, even though the WGA in turn presented our own counterproposal to the AMPTP on August 15th. The current standstill is not a sign of the companies’ power, but of AMPTP paralysis.
“The studios and streamers bargaining together through the AMPTP have disparate business models and interests, as well as different histories and relationships with unions. They are competitors in all respects, except when they band together to deal with Hollywood labor. Through the AMPTP, these legacy studios and streamers negotiate as a united front which allows hard liners to dictate the course of action for all the companies. The AMPTP purports to represent all of these disparate corporate interests, but in practice administers a system that favors inflexibility over compromise, and sacrifices the interests of individual companies in reaching a deal. That regression to the hardest line has produced the first simultaneous strikes since 1960.
“In contrast, during individual conversations with legacy studio executives in the weeks since SAG-AFTRA went on strike, we have heard both the desire and willingness to negotiate an agreement that adequately addresses writers’ issues. One executive said they had reviewed our proposals, and though they did not commit to a specific deal, said our proposals would not affect their company’s bottom line and that they recognized they must give more than usual to settle this negotiation. Another said they needed a deal badly. Those same executives – and others – have said they are willing to negotiate on proposals that the AMPTP has presented to the public as deal breakers. On every single issue we are asking for we have had at least one legacy studio executive tell us they could accommodate us.
“So, while the intransigence of the AMPTP structure is impeding progress, these behind-the-scenes conversations demonstrate there is a fair deal to be made that addresses our issues. Given the outsized economic impact of the strikes on the legacy companies, their individual studio interest in making a deal isn’t surprising. Warner Bros. confirmed this in a public financial filing just this week.
“We have made it clear that we will negotiate with one or more of the major studios, outside the confines of the AMPTP, to establish the new WGA deal. There is no requirement that the companies negotiate through the AMPTP. So, if the economic destabilization of their own companies isn’t enough to cause a studio or two or three to either assert their own self-interest inside the AMPTP, or to break away from the broken AMPTP model, perhaps Wall Street will finally make them do it.
“Until there is a breakthrough, the companies and AMPTP will try to sow doubt and internal guild dissension. Keep your radar up. When the companies send messages through surrogates or the press about the unreasonableness of your guild leadership, take those messages as part of a bad-faith effort to influence negotiations and not as the objective truth.
“The companies know the truth: they must negotiate if they want to end the strike. They may not like it – they may try to obscure it – but they know it. While they wrestle with that fact and with each other, they will continue attempting to get writers to settle for less than what we need and deserve, and encourage us to negotiate with ourselves. But we are not going to do that.
“Instead, the companies inside the AMPTP who want a fair deal with writers must take control of the AMPTP process itself, or decide to make a deal separately. At that point, a resolution to the strike will be in reach.
“We understand how painful this time is for everyone. We are all tired and hurting and scared. There is nothing wrong with saying so. The optimism for a return to negotiation has been met with a harsh reminder of how fraught this process can be. We share the frustration with how long the companies are prolonging the strike, and remain committed to negotiating a fair resolution as fast as possible.
“In the meantime, as always, you can find your Negotiating Committee and Board and Council members out on the picket lines. When there is anything of significance to report, we will write again.
IN SOLIDARITY, WGA NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE
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.
