2023-09-23 06:50:03
Hollywood studios and screenwriters will continue their negotiations on Saturday, their union announced, after progress which suggests a desire to put an end to the strike which has paralyzed the sector for almost five months.
“We continue to work to obtain an agreement that the screenwriters deserve,” explained the WGA in a message to the 11,500 industry leaders it represents, published Friday evening.
The studios and the WGA resumed their talks on Wednesday on sharing streaming revenue and regulating the use of artificial intelligence, after almost a month of silence. This new attempt at negotiations raises a lot of hope among sector observers, because signs of progress are emerging from the discussions.
Encouraging signs
For three days, the big names from Disney (Bob Iger), Netflix (Ted Sarandos), Warner Bros (David Zaslav) and NBCUniversal (Donna Langley), have all been around the table, according to the American specialist press.
Another encouraging sign, the WGA and the employers, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), published a joint press release Wednesday evening to announce the extension of the talks.
This unusual approach raises hopes that an agreement is imminent. It denotes a narrowing of the gap between the two parties, after 144 days of strike which virtually brought the industry to a standstill.
>> Read also: On the 100th day of their strike, Hollywood screenwriters castigate the studios
Similar claims
Since mid-July, actors have also been on strike, which paralyzes the vast majority of film and television series production in the United States. Hollywood workers have similar demands.
The first is the sharing of streaming-related revenues, in order to be able to earn more when one of their films or series is a hit on a platform, instead of receiving a lump sum payment, generally quite low, regardless of the popularity of the program.
The two trades also want safeguards against the use of artificial intelligence: actors fear seeing their image or voice cloned, while screenwriters fear that AI could be used for scripts and that they are paid less, or that their scenarios are used to train robots.
Hard blow for the Californian economy
Despite an agreement between studios and screenwriters, the actors would remain on strike. Their union, SAG-AFTRA, has not spoken to the employers since mid-July. However, according to the specialized press, a compromise with the industry’s feathers would pave the way for an end to the actresses’ strike.
At the beginning of September, the Financial Times reported a study by the Milken Institute which estimated the cost of this double social movement, unseen since 1960, at five billion dollars for the Californian economy.
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