Friday, September 6, 2024

"Striking screenwriters will resume negotiations with studios on Friday"/ "Hollywood screenwriters reach deal to end five-month strike"

Aug. 10, 2023 "Striking screenwriters will resume negotiations with studios on Friday": Today I found this article on BNN Bloomberg:


LOS ANGELES (AP) — The guild that represents striking film and television screenwriters says negotiations with major studios and streaming services will resume Friday.

The Writers Guild of America sent a message to its members Thursday saying they expect the studios will respond to their proposals. The two sides met last week to discuss possibly restarting negotiations, but no negotiation dates were immediately set.

“Our committee returns to the bargaining table ready to make a fair deal, knowing the unified WGA membership stands behind us and buoyed by the ongoing support of our union allies,” The Writers Guild told its members.

The screenwriters have now been on strike for 101 days, surpassing a 2007-2008 work stoppage that ground many Hollywood productions to a halt. 

This time the writers have been joined on picket lines by Hollywood actors, who are also striking to seek better compensation and protections on the use of artificial intelligence in the industry. 

It is the first time since 1960 that the two unions have been on strike at the same time.

Both guilds are seeking to address issues brought about by the dominance of streaming services, 

which have changed all aspects of production from how projects are written to when they're released.


For the writers, the services' use of small staffs, known as “mini rooms," for shorter time periods has made a living income hard to achieve, the guild has said. 

It cites the number of writers working at minimum scale — which has jumped from about a third to about a half in the past decade — as proof.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the studios and streaming services, has said the writers’ demands would require that they be kept on staff and paid when there is no work for them.

The strike has delayed numerous film and television productions, forced late-night talk shows into reruns and delayed the Emmy Awards, which will now air in January.

There is no indication yet that actors and the studios will return to the negotiating table anytime soon.

Their union, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said Thursday it was ready to represent reality show performers in response to “Real Housewives of New York” star Bethenny Frankel's push for performers to receive residuals and have better working conditions on sets.

The union urged reality performers to reach out “so that we may work together toward the protection of the reality performers ending the exploitative practices that have developed in this area and to engage in a new path to Union coverage.”

During the last writers strike, reality television was one way networks filled their schedules.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/striking-screenwriters-will-resume-negotiations-with-studios-on-friday-1.1957527


Sept. 24, 2023 "Hollywood screenwriters reach deal to end five-month strike": Today I found this article by Lucas Shaw on BNN Bloomberg:

Striking Hollywood screenwriters reached a tentative new labour agreement with studios including Walt Disney Co. and Netflix Inc., settling one of two walkouts that have shut down film and TV production.

The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,500 Hollywood scribes, said Sunday it reached the deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, the studios’ bargaining group. The agreement, if approved by the guild members, will end a strike that began on May 2.

The provisional three-year deal remains subject to the completion of contract language and recommendations from the union’s council and board, which could come as soon as Tuesday.

Members would vote after that, although the union leadership may give them permission to return to work before the final tally. 

“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional – with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the guild said in a statement.

The writers went on strike for the first time since 2007 to fight for higher pay from streaming services, which have reshaped how TV is made and how talent gets paid. The Screen Actors Guild joined them in July over similar concerns.

Details of the agreement won’t be announced for a few days, however people familiar with the matter said earlier that writers gained concessions on key points, including higher wages.

The studios have agreed to staff a certain number of writers on their TV shows, a figure that will increase with the number of episodes in a season, one of the people said.

The two sides have also created a structure in which writers will receive bonuses for popular shows on streaming services.

And it appears they have also reached an agreement on the use of artificial intelligence, which writers feared could destroy jobs.

The deal will pave the way for soap operas, game shows and late-night talk shows to resume, but production work on most dramatic programs will remain stopped until the actors’ walkout ends.

The momentum from the agreement should help resolve the actors’ strike quickly, according to Alex DeGroote, a media analyst in London. Even so, it will take time before big-budget shows and movies resume production, he said.

“The world’s movie theatres can celebrate,” AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron said on X. “Extremely good news that progress is being made.”

Production of hundreds of films and TV shows stopped as a result of the strikes, impacting not just writers and actors but directors, crew members and industries like catering and real estate. 

With less money coming in, 

talent agencies fired workers 

and studios suspended deals with major producers to cut costs. 

Awards shows have been delayed and film festivals held without stars. 

The walkout has delayed the return of new shows for the fall TV season, 

and many films scheduled to debut this year were pushed into 2024.

Shares of studios were mixed on Monday. Netflix was up 0.7 per cent at 9:54 a.m. and Disney gained 0.5 per cent. Warner Bros Discovery Inc. fell 0.8 per cent and Paramount Global was little changed.

The studios and writers didn’t come close to a deal before the onset of the strike, and the studios and writers then didn’t negotiate for months, during which thousands of guild members protested outside the studios’ offices from New York to Los Angeles. 

While the economics of streaming remained the primary focus of the guilds, 

the threat of artificial intelligence also emerged as a growing concern.

The heads of the biggest media companies got more engaged with the dispute in late July and early August, after the actors joined the strike. 

The studios offered a new proposal in August that addressed many, but not all, of the writers’ concerns. The two sides negotiated for a couple of weeks before breaking off yet again.

The September negotiations came as a surprise. The two sides hadn’t been speaking — at least not officially — and many studio executives were debating whether it was time to engage with the actors instead.

But pressure on both sides to cut a deal had increased.

Studios feared the impact of months more without the ability to produce new programming, 

and many writers began to push their union’s leadership to cut a deal so everyone could get back to work.

People who work in entertainment, be they writers or grips, were starting to leave Los Angeles due to the lack of progress. 

Prominent writers asked to meet with the leadership of the guild to discuss the state of the negotiations, and several talk shows said they would return, only to cancel plans under pressure from the unions.

When the latest talks began, four of the most powerful executives in entertainment — Netflix Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav and NBCUniversal Chief Content Officer Donna Langley — joined their labour negotiators.

The studios and writers negotiated for several days. After months of public acrimony and finger-pointing, the two sides kept their public communications to a minimum as they hammered out a deal to get the industry back to work.

While the writers’ rooms may soon reopen, a return to production will have to await a deal with striking actors, who have been picketing from coast to coast, shutting down productions that tried to restart.

This was the first time in more than 60 years that both writers and actors went on strike at the same time. 

The Directors Guild of America reached a new agreement with the studios in June.

--With assistance from Isabella Ward.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/hollywood-screenwriters-reach-deal-to-end-five-month-strike-1.1975725

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