The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers issued a rare joint statement after the widely anticipated renewal of talks between the two parties on Wednesday.
“The WGA and AMPTP met for bargaining today and will meet again tomorrow,” the straightforward statement read. Though it’s not atypical during entertainment labor negotiations for a union and the AMPTP to issue a joint statement during talks, often amid some kind of media blackout affecting the two parties, it is unusual for the WGA and the AMPTP to do in this contentious negotiations cycle.
Top entertainment company leaders including Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley joined the negotiations on Wednesday in a sign of a new sense of urgency pervading the discussions. “CEOs have cleared their calendars and want to sit and have a real conversation,” one studio-side source familiar with Wednesday’s session told THR.
These executives had cleared their schedules in preparation for the talks to go late, which turned out not to be necessary — the meeting had ended by the late afternoon.
Wednesday’s gathering marked a return to the bargaining table for the WGA and the AMPTP, whose negotiations reached a standstill in late August following a separate meeting between top WGA leaders and top studio executives. That conference, on Aug. 21, was followed by the AMPTP publicly releasing an earlier proposal to the writers and the writers clapping back by claiming the CEOs had greeted them with “a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was.”
#Writers #Guild #AMPTP #Issue #Rare #Joint #Statement #Renewed #Negotiations #Hollywood #Reporter
