WGA & AMPTP Seek Path Back Toward Negotiating Table

Via Deadline:

EXCLUSIVE: The writers strike is heading toward its 100th day next week, but there’s a new sense of guarded optimism that both parties — the WGA and the studios, represented by the AMPTP — are on the verge of a making a breakthrough.

The scribes and the studios are discussing a move that would bring them back to the negotiating table to hammer out a deal that could end at least one of the strikes that have taken over Hollywood, we hear.

It marks the first significant step toward progress since the writers strike began May 2, and is the first time in three months insiders have felt cautiously optimistic that official talks can resume.

“The discussions are centered on creating committees to examine the issues,” one source told Deadline.

The topics at the top of the agenda include minimum staffing, duration of employment, a viewership-based streaming residual and AI. There’s hope that they can find a compromise on the latter, at least. However, multiple sources contend the situation is in the early stages and still quite fluid.

Some of the studio bosses, including Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Disney’s Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, weighed in on the matter with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Friday. Discussing both the SAG-AFTRA and WGA labor actions, the gathering of execs was intended in no small part to “bring the temperature down,” according to one well-positioned source.

The article notes that the plan for these discussions had not “reached the level of AMPTP president Carol Lombardini and Ellen Stutzman, Chief Negotiator for the WGA and Assistant Executive Director of Writers Guild of America, West.”

Later yesterday, that happened.

So progress, right? Bring in the lawyers to “bring the temperature down,” that sounds good. And this doesn’t surprise:

We’re hearing there’s a drive, particularly from the legacy media companies, to get this done sooner rather than later.

As I’ve been suggesting for the last few weeks in my daily WGA Strike series of articles, the legacy studios have a far different agenda than the streamers. The former actually need revenue from theatrical movies. The latter not only don’t need that form of revenue, they apparently don’t care about the health and well-being of theatrical exhibitors and — heaven forbid — movie fans who actually love going to the theater like a bazillion of us did the last 10 days to revel in Barbenheimer.

So, it appears the two sides are talking about talking. I’ll take that as good news.

For the rest of the Deadline article, go here.

The Hollywood Reporter weighs in on this news here.

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

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