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The writers’ strike hit the four-month mark on Saturday, and as the Hot Labor Summer moves into fall, there’s still no sign it will be ending any time soon.
The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have not spoken in two weeks. Both claim that the ball is in the other’s court.
Far from resolving the strike, the parties face the delicate challenge of finding their way back into the negotiating room. The WGA is open to discussions, but has let the AMPTP take the lead. The AMPTP could invite the authors again – as it did on August 1 – but it has nothing new to offer.
“Obviously we are not giving in,” said one author. “You have to think of something.”
There remains frustration on the studio side that the writers haven’t made major concessions. The AMPTP made proposals on Aug. 11 in several areas it had previously declined to discuss, including a second step for original scripts, access to viewership data and a showrunner option to hire at least two writers per show. In its Aug. 15 response, the WGA softened slightly on some numbers but largely maintained its original positions. Management believes that taking another step on their part would amount to little more than “negotiating against ourselves.”
“The Writers Guild doesn’t give studios much opportunity to find a solution,” said one veteran of studio work. “It’s one thing to say, ‘Okay, let’s find a way to get this done.’ But it takes two to tango.”
Since there were no talks, both sides hoped that the other side would break under the pressure, but this has so far not come true.
Some writers have expressed some unease, particularly as Labor Day has arrived and there is little hope of salvaging scripted series for the network’s 2023-24 television season. WGA members have not received an update from the union in more than a week, leaving many with little idea of where negotiations stand.
Nevertheless, the WGA membership has remained far more united than during the 2007-08 strike, when levels of solidarity waned as the strike ended its 100th day.
This time there have been rumors of dissident factions of the showrunners, but so far there have been no riots. One reason may be that the WGA has recently enlisted the industry’s largest talent agencies to reform the decades-old practice of agencies receiving packaging fees from studios for helping clients put together television series and films. Amid this two-year effort, hundreds of dissenting authors signed an open letter in 2019 calling on WGA leadership to resolve the dispute. But this only served to increase tensions within the guild without changing the course of the campaign. The WGA prevailed and imposed a new conflict of interest code on talent agents.
Likewise, there is no indication that any of the studios or streamers will break away from the AMPTP and reach a separate agreement with the writers. Despite much speculation about divisions between tech upstarts (Netflix, Amazon, Apple) and Hollywood’s old guard (Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, Paramount Global and Sony Pictures Entertainment), management sources said there were no disagreements over strategy and tactics to the larger goal. If anything, says one person with direct knowledge of the situation, the name-calling of CEOs and studios on picket lines and on social media amid the twin WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes has only brought industry executives even closer together amid the crisis.
In its latest communication to members, the WGA acknowledged that the AMPTP had made “progress,” but also said the latest offer was “not yet good enough.” The “yet” suggested that further work could improve it – but so far that hasn’t happened.
“The CEOs are paralyzed,” said the author. “They didn’t expect us to be so powerful. Now they don’t know what to do.”
Cynthia Littleton contributed to this story.