The Writers Guild dismisses the studios’ offer, sparking concerns that the ongoing strike could be far from over.
Another day, another strike update. Hollywood has been dealing with the ongoing economic woes of a industry-wide shutdown for many weeks now. Writers have been on strike for over 100 days, surpassing the length of the 2007/8 strike which was estimated to have caused around $2bn worth of damage to the Los Angeles economy.
The other day, the alliance of studios made public a deal that they have offered the striking Writers Guild of America. On the surface at least, it looked like lots of the points of contention had been addressed, including regulating the use of AI and offering guarantees in key areas like residual payments and data transparency.
Thus, a sense of vague optimism dawned as everybody hoped things were moving in a forwards direction after months where both parties weren’t even in active negotiations. However, it appears that this may have been a false dawn and despite personal appearances from studio bigwigs such as Ted Sarandos and Bob Iger, the WGA has rejected the deal.
Of course, the devil is in the details when it comes to these contract renewals and the deal publicised by the alliance of studios to the press may have ommitted all kinds of small print that the WGA has clearly taken issue with. The guild is also rather unhappy that the studios broke the mutual agreement not to make public the state of negotiations by publishing details of the offered contract.
Oh dear. Things seem pretty frayed once more, don’t they? Hopefully, both parties at least stay around the negotiating table, although the alliance of studios has publicly stated this is the only counteroffer it will be making. If it intends to back that statement up, negotiations may stall once more. We’ll let you know how things develop as we hear more.
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