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On Saturday, September 23, Disney CEO Bob Iger was in Beverly Hills and appeared to be living his best life. He was having dinner with Paul McCartney and Eagles alum Joe Walsh at La Dolce Vita, an old-world Italian restaurant with long white tablecloths and dark red leather booths. Some people took discreet photos, as would be expected with a Beatle in the house.
But not everyone was focused solely on McCartney. By the time dinner was over, blurry images of Iger at the table with McCartney had been posted in the WhatsApp group chat, which included nearly 500 showrunners. Then someone posted a picture of a Writers’ Tears whiskey bottle (yes, a real brand) and suggested sending it to Iger’s table. No one did, but the table received a series of pictures labeled “As expected from the showrunners of Hollywood.”
There had been reports for days that the Writers Guild and the studios were tantalizingly close to an agreement that could end a strike that had dragged on for nearly five grueling months. But as Iger enjoyed his Saturday meal, there was still no deal.
That finally changed the following evening, when a concerned city was informed of a tentative agreement that the guild leadership described as “extraordinary” and provided for “significant profits and protections for writers.” Although no details have been released as of press time, jubilant Guild members gathered at the barrel-shaped Idle Hour bar in North Hollywood to celebrate.
The deal was the result of several days of negotiations between the guild and four studio heads: Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, NBCUniversal chief content officer Donna Langley and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Just weeks earlier, on August 22, guild officials met with these leaders, eventually blasting them in a late-night message to members. Instead of finally getting a chance to negotiate with the executives, the guild’s negotiating committee said, “We were lectured about how good their one and only counteroffer was.”
What followed was a standoff over who owed whom a counteroffer. In late August, as talks stalled amid mutual accusations, several showrunners – including Kenya Barris (Black-ish), Noah Hawley (Fargo) and Courtney Kemp (Power) – began to question the guild’s leadership. “People like Kenya obviously wanted information. There was no coup,” says a showrunner. “We only asked the questions that were on everyone’s mind. The thing about showrunners is that they are CEOs in their own right, running huge companies with huge studio deals. Noah Hawley, for example, has two shows and employs a thousand people. We all did our part to keep people from going bankrupt and get them back to work.” Adds another: “The WGA has put in all the effort and felt it [the AMPTP] had to call us. Then Chris Keyser, [co-chair of the WGA’s negotiating committee], also started hearing from Teamsters that they should do something. It wasn’t anger at the strike or calls to quit; It was anger at the lack of attempt to get things back on track.”
The deep chill between the studios and the guild finally began to thaw on the evening of September 10, when Keyser called Iger and engaged in a conversation that, according to knowledgeable sources, lasted more than an hour and was “very honest and direct.” ” That evening he also spoke with Zaslav, Sarandos and Langley. They agreed that there was no point in arguing about which side owed the other a counteroffer; The goal was to get the industry back on track, end the misery that had spread far beyond the guild’s members, and prevent what some executives feared would be lasting damage to the company. Iger committed to staying in the room as long as necessary to achieve the goal, as did the other three executives on the team. Everyone cleared their calendars.
When negotiations resumed on September 20, it was clear that Iger was the elder statesman and the only leader who had lived through the last writers’ strike. Zaslav, who had the least experience in the screenwriting world, was still an experienced negotiator in many difficult deals. Langley brought a clear head and the most practical creative experience, as well as strong relationships with talent. One source described her as “the diplomat” in the room. Sources said Sarandos spent more time communicating with SAG-AFTRA than the WGA leading up to the final marathon negotiations, but ultimately joined the other three.
Executives’ promise to stay in the room until a deal was reached was challenged on the afternoon of Sept. 21, when CEOs believed they were inches away from a deal. After much hesitation in the first phase of negotiations, the studio group had presented a package that it said addressed the guild’s key concerns – minimal staffing for writers’ rooms, AI protections and performance-based residuals for streaming. According to sources, the guild came with what was considered a late request from the studio’s perspective, looking for a deal point that would protect members if they refused to cross other unions’ picket lines, even though the WGA had been signaling for weeks that it would would attempt such a provision. Iger angrily left the room, as did the other executives. According to sources, Zaslav said to the other side: “What are you doing? We’re at the 10-yard line … we’ve basically given you everything you wanted.” Iger returned briefly to admonish Guild negotiators that this was a serious moment that required careful thought. Sources say Keyser ultimately contacted Iger and resumed talks.
WGA spokesman Bob Hopkinson disputed the above account but declined to elaborate. Studio bosses declined to comment.
While the deal still needs to be approved by guild members, the hope is that the studios can then reach an agreement with SAG-AFTRA relatively quickly and get the city back to work. But even with a negotiated peace potentially on the horizon, there are members in the guild who feel the challenges facing their profession will remain. They fear the industry is shrinking and displacing young and diverse writers as the content bubble shrinks from its peak of nearly 600 U.S. screenwriters. In other words, a golden era for writers may be over, at least for the foreseeable future.
“Everyone will call it pre-strike and post-strike,” says a well-known showrunner, “but it’s actually kind of pre-peak TV and post-peak TV.”