Without naming names, union officers mentioned that executives at primary studios had indicated their calls for had been affordable and {that a} deal was once there available. The AMPTP had no fast reaction.
The message got here in a memo from the writers guild’s negotiating committee to union participants.
“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,” the bargaining committee wrote. “There is no requirement that the companies negotiate through the AMPTP. So, if the economic destabilization of their own companies isn’t enough to cause a studio or two or three to either assert their own self-interest inside the AMPTP, or to break away from the broken AMPTP model, perhaps Wall Street will finally make them do it.”
The remaining remark was once a connection with a contemporary monetary submitting from Warner Bros. Discovery disclosing that the studio may lose $500 million this yr as Hollywood’s strike drags on.
Actors also are on strike and must negotiate a separate take care of the AMPTP.
In some ways the WGA memo said publicly what trade insiders have lengthy been announcing — that it makes little sense to have corporations which can be competition and have other imperatives negotiating in combination. For instance, studios like Warner Bros., Paramount/CBS and Sony are fascinated about salvaging their fall seasons and getting primary motion pictures into theaters. Netflix, then again, isn’t working beneath any explicit time constraint and is assumed to have lots of subject material to maintain viewer pastime for months to come back.
Meanwhile for Amazon and Apple, streaming is only a small section of their total industry. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.)
“The companies inside the AMPTP who want a fair deal with writers must take control of the AMPTP process itself, or decide to make a deal separately. At that point, a resolution to the strike will be in reach,” the memo mentioned.