A Tuesday night meeting between striking Hollywood screenwriters and the big bosses of Disney, Universal, Warner Bros. and Netflix has sparked a new dialogue among the deaf in a sector paralyzed by a historic social movement, the union said. Springs of the Industry (WGA).
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After three months of radio silence and an actors’ strike in mid-July, screenwriters and studios resumed negotiations in early August. But despite a new offer from employers to improve pay and working conditions and regulate the use of artificial intelligence, talks are still deadlocked.
Tuesday night’s encounter was “a sermon on the quality of their only counter-offer,” the WGA said in a statement. “It was not a meeting to reach an agreement. It was a meeting that should make us give in.”
The presence of big bosses Bob Iger (Disney), Donna Langley (Universal Pictures), Ted Sarandos (Netflix) and David Zaslav (Warner Bros.) wasn’t enough to restore quality dialogue.
There hasn’t been a simultaneous strike by actors and screenwriters in Hollywood since the 1960s. This dual social movement costs the industry millions of dollars every day.
But for the WGA, the studios’ counteroffer is fraught with “gaps” and “omissions” and falls short of the “existential threats” facing the industry.
“We came to the table with an offer that addresses screenwriters’ priority concerns,” said Carol Lombardini, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents employers.
“We are determined to end the strike and we hope the WGA will work in the same direction,” she added.
The AMPTP presented the elements of its new offer to the press.
In particular, studios and platforms are proposing to increase the minimum wage for screenwriters by 13% over three years and to share viewing hours of streaming shows with the union. Viewership numbers so far confidential.
Sharing streaming revenue remains at the heart of the war: Like actors, screenwriters want to be able to earn a lot more if one of their films or series is a hit on a platform, rather than receiving a lump sum payment regardless of the program’s popularity. But the studios are only proposing to restructure this remuneration system “in the future”.
In the spirit of artificial intelligence, they offer screenwriters the opportunity to rework screenplays originally created by an AI, whereby they are considered the sole author of this work and therefore receive no reduced remuneration.
On the other hand, there is no mention of the possibility of training an AI using existing scripts, a red line for the WGA.