When No News Isn't Good News
The people demand to know: When are we going to see movement on contract talks?
The question of the week, after the Labor Day holiday: What’s the latest on the strike negotiations?
As of Thursday evening, not much to visibly report, though that’s not to say there aren’t backchannel conversations possibly happening away from the prying eyes of the press. Things are quiet and people are antsy. Strikegeist readers are hurting. The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have not met in any official capacity since Aug. 22, after the studios and streamers released their proposal package to the public. And the AMPTP has not met with SAG-AFTRA since the start of the actors strike. So both strikes churn on.
At the Toronto International Film Festival, Richard Rushfield (aka The OG Ankler) notes SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland will be out and about — he’s slated to speak onstage at the festival on Friday. Richard just landed in Canada, so we’ll get more of an update on the vibe tomorrow, and to what extent the indie film market is being impacted by the work stoppages and overall Hollywood tumult. According to one major indie film producer, “There’s enough in the system now to keep us pumping easily for three years.”
Back in Los Angeles, the pickets continue. As you might’ve read, Warner Bros.’ television division has suspended overall deals for many of its high-level writer-producers, including J.J. Abrams, Greg Berlanti, Mindy Kaling and Bill Lawerence.
Meanwhile, at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia and Technology conference on Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav stressed the need to end the strikes. “We’re a content company. We’re a storytelling company. And we need to do everything we can to get people back to work,” he said. “People need to be fairly compensated. We really have to focus as an industry, and we are, on trying to get this resolved in a way that’s really fair.” Of course, as the company revealed in an SEC filing on Tuesday, its fiscal 2023 earnings are expected to take a $300 million to $500 million walloping from the continued production stoppages.
Elsewhere on The Ankler
Peter Kiefer, who broke the news last November that film rights were being shopped for a yet-to-be-written book by Michael Lewis who had been embedded with FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, is reporting that Apple snapped up those rights for a whopping $5 million. But the tech giant’s project with Lewis isn’t the only SBF story Hollywood is working on. According to Kiefer, there are eight of them, including a documentary by Nanette Burstein. The race to bring SBF to the big screen is on.
Says Kiefer:
According to two sources, Lewis declined to provide Apple executives or any potential screenwriters access to his notes or a peek at an early draft of his book — which would be fine if not for the competing scripted projects. Director and screenwriter Scott Burns and Jonathan Glickman’s Panoramic have partnered with the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin for an SBF-related project, while the Oscar-winning writer of The Imitation Game, Graham Moore, is reportedly planning to write and direct a project based on a New York Magazine article that delved into the topic. Back in November, Amazon ordered an eight-episode limited series about the FTX scandal from Joe and Anthony Russo’s production company, AGBO, which the streamer was planning to fast-track before the writers strike. It’s safe to say every one of these projects has been delayed; and even if the strike is resolved in October, it would likely be a year before any entered the marketplace.
Meanwhile, outside of Burstein’s documentary, there are a handful of other FTX docs in the works, including projects by Vice and tech business publication The Information; another project from New York Magazine and Vox Media; a project from nonfiction studio XTR; and yet another one that Mark Wahlberg’s production company, Unrealistic Ideas, is producing in conjunction with Fortune magazine.
Head to The Ankler for the full story, available to paid subscribers.
Today in Strike News
As the Toronto International Film Festival gets underway, sales agents are split on whether or not the ongoing strikes will affect the amount and size of potential deals. (Variety)
Outside Amazon Studios in Culver City on Thursday, writers and actors picketed in support of a bill that would grant unemployment benefits to striking workers in California, something those in New York and New Jersey are already eligible for. (Deadline)
Maya Gilbert-Dunbar, who is challenging Fran Drescher in this week’s SAG-AFTRA presidential election, is calling on the guild to utilize an outside mediator in the negotiations and resort to more aggressive striking tactics. “Chain your asses up to the damn door of the Sherman Oaks building to show how serious you are,” Gilbert-Dunbar says. “People can’t afford this. Strikes were never meant to last months and months. An effective strike should be short and sweet.” (Variety)
Some likely impacts of the strikes on the Oscars: an advantage for streamers, a focus on directors, a strong ‘Barbenheimer’ performance, and an inability for newer actors to reach the spotlight. (New York Times)
Additional reporting by Matthew Frank.
Disclosure: Elaine Low is an inactive member of SAG-AFTRA.
“People can’t afford this. Strikes were never meant to last months and months. An effective strike should be short and sweet.”
If a candidate for leadership in my guild had said this, I would find it disqualifying. One of the least intelligent, unserious and unhelpful things I’ve heard about labor action literally ever. OMFG.