Update: WGA Negotiating Committee

“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.”

Yesterday (Friday, September 8) at 6:01PM Pacific, the WGA Negotiating Committee sent this message to Guild members.

The committee is publicly stating what everybody knows. As this article from the Washington Post acknowledges:

In many ways the WGA memo stated publicly what industry insiders have long been saying — that it makes little sense to have companies that are competitors and have different imperatives negotiating together. For example, studios like Warner Bros., Paramount/CBS and Sony are concerned about salvaging their fall seasons and getting major movies into theaters. Netflix, on the other hand, is not operating under any particular time constraint and is thought to have plenty of material to sustain viewer interest for months to come.

Meanwhile for Amazon and Apple, streaming is just a small part of their overall business.

The AMPTP worked fairly well for decades as it brought together studios that shared the same model and similar interests. The rise of the streamers, however, threw a disruptive new element into the mix.

The eight major companies of the AMPTP are not only business “enemies,” they have vastly different business models.

Hopefully, the legacy studios (Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros.) will negotiate a separate deal with the WGA. Presumably, that would break the strike.

Finally.

#WGAStrong

For the latest updates on the strike and news resources, go here.

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