WGA & AMPTP Set More Talks For Tomorrow As Strike Fears Grip Hollywood; Guild & Studios Still Far Apart

Bad Sisters creator Sharon Horgan has joined the writers strike for her U.S. projects, but is continuing to work on Season 2 of the Apple TV+ series.

As Michael J. Fox continues his ongoing battle with Parkinson’s Disease, he reflected on the sacrifices he made to become a successful Hollywood actor. The "Back to the Future" star was determined to succeed in the industry, even if it meant being a starving artist for a while.  "I was 18 years old, with no money, no connections, literally dumpster diving for food," Fox said during an interview with Variety.

Law enforcement to horn-blowing strike supporters: you may be breaking the law, man!

The Italian actress is in talks to join the Tim Burton directed Beetlejuice 2, we hear, which starts rolling cameras this month.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer If Hollywood’s labor drama were a script, this would be the start of Act Two. On Wednesday, as writers walk picket lines outside the major studios, the Directors Guild of America will sit down for its negotiations on a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. A deal — if they are able to reach one — could help resolve the writers strike. That’s what happened 15 years ago, when the Writers Guild of America was on strike and the directors went in for their contract negotiations. Leveraging the pressure of an industry-wide work stoppage that was in its third month, the DGA secured milestone agreements for unfettered jurisdiction over the internet and a residual formula for what was then quaintly known as “new media” exploitation of movies and TV shows.

EXCLUSIVE: The AMPTP has called the Writers Guild’s minimum staffing demands for episodic TV shows “a hiring quota that is incompatible with the creative nature of our industry.” But if the WGA prevails in its ongoing strike, it wouldn’t be the first guild to require minimum staffing in its contract.

EXCLUSIVE: “This is about setting the course for the industry for the future,” said Directors Guild of America chief Lesli Linka Glatter today on the guild upcoming talks with studios and the WGA strike that stated this week. “We’re in a team sport. We’re only as good as our teams.”

Jennifer Coolidge won’t be making her “Saturday Night Live” hosting debut this month, after all.

Billie Lourd was surrounded by family members and one of Carrie Fisher‘s Star Wars castmates while accepting her mom’s posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in her honor on Thursday (May 4) in Hollywood, Calif.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer To a lot of people outside the negotiating room, a strike by Hollywood writers felt inevitable. But it didn’t feel that way inside the room. Until the last day or two, negotiators for both labor and management believed that the other side would give, and that a deal would be reached at the last moment. But picket lines in Los Angeles and New York this week tell a different story. The conflict that led to the breakdown of talks on the night of May 1 began the day before. On April 30, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers delivered a 40-page package of proposals to WGA’s negotiating committee. It did not include key elements that the Writers Guild of America has insisted are essential to sealing a new three-year contract, including a mandatory minimum number of weeks for TV writers and a minimum staff size for writers rooms.

WGA went on strike, in 2007. The strike promises to bring even more upheaval to a marketplace that is already grappling with the fallout from technological disruption and still rebuilding from the pandemic. Six weeks of tense negotiations made it clear that the industry faces a reckoning after a decade of the Peak TV content boom that has strained Hollywood’s creative infrastructure to its breaking point.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The Writers Guild of America West will begin picketing Tuesday afternoon outside of Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Warner Bros., and the other major studios in Los Angeles, after a strike was called on Monday night. The Writers Guild of America East, based in New York, put out a schedule for the “first two weeks of picketing,” which will begin on Tuesday at the Peacock NewFront on 5th Avenue. The WGAE also plans to picket outside Netflix headquarters in New York on Wednesday. The WGA called a strike Monday night, after the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced that negotiations had concluded for the day without a deal. The current three-year contract expires at midnight on Monday.

Talks between the writers and the studios have concluded tonight without an agreement.

EXCLUSIVE: While the Writers Guild of America will continue to negotiate with the studios right up to the expiration of their current contact on May 1, strike preparations are underway — but Hollywood might not see picket lines as quickly as you think.

EXCLUSIVE: As the deadline approaches to avert a threatened writers strike, IATSE President Matt Loeb has told leaders of his locals that it’s probably going to be do-or-die when the WGA’s current contract expires Monday night at midnight PT and that “he doubts an extension is in the cards.”

EXCLUSIVE: In the event of a strike by the Writers Guild, IATSE members working on struck shows have the “legal right” to honor the guild’s picket lines, though they might be replaced temporarily by non-union workers, according to IATSE president Matthew Loeb.

Picket signs are being prepared to possibly hit the streets next week, but talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers appear to have taken a productive turn in the past 24 hours.

Paramount Animation, Hasbro and eOne are teaming on the first-ever animated Transformers movie, now titled Transformers One. Directed by Josh Cooley and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the origins story’s key voice cast includes Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Jon Hamm and Laurence Fishburne. Release is scheduled for July 19, 2024.

The WGA, in a message to members accompanying its new set of “Strike Rules,” is answering frequently asked questions about a possible strike that could happen as soon as May 2. And the answer to many of the questions is “No.”

Rita Moreno Harry Belafonte, who passed away today at the age of 96, was not only a Tony-, Grammy- and Emmy-winning singer and actor, he was a vitally important activist who brought many top Hollywood actors to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legendary march on Washington in 1963. Below, his longtime friend, EGOT-winning actress, singer and dancer Rita Moreno, remembers that day, and more. Harry Belafonte was the reason that a planeload of movie stars showed up for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in August 1963. The trip came about at his behest. Harry wanted very much for Dr. King to understand that there were people in Hollywood who really cared, people who were emotionally involved in politics and cared for the welfare of people of any color.