Back in August, “anonymous Hollywood studio executives” took to the industry trades to float the notion that if the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes continued, studios might be forced to terminate their overall deals with writer/producers, invoking their contracts’ force majeure clauses.
Variety has reported that several AMPTP member companies have suspended their overall deals with some TV heavy-hitters. Last week, Warner Bros. TV suspended their megadeals with writer/producers like J.J. Abrams, Mindy Kaling, and Greg Berlanti, among others. According to the Variety piece:
“Some of those names, including [John] Wells and [Chuck] Lorre, had their deals suspended months ago, early on in the Writers Guild of America strike. Others who had shows in various stages of post-production when the work stoppage began May 2 were kept status quo while episodes were completed. The latest news of suspensions comes months after Warner Bros. TV, along with Amazon, HBO, Warner Bros. TV, NBCUniversal, Disney, CBS Studios and other major struck studios already hit pause on some first-look and overall deals amid the ongoing writers strike.”
The article makes clear that these are suspensions, not terminations. Though it “reminds” us that studios could terminate the deals if they wanted to because it’s been over 90 days and apparently that’s the magic number for this kind of thing, blah, blah, blah.
Of course, something tells me that Warner Bros. doesn’t want to out-and-out lose a Greg Berlanti or a J.J. Abrams, but what do I know? In any case, the suspension means that the deals can resume once the strike is over, and the time lost during the strikes can be tacked onto the end of the deals.
Variety recently reported that NBCUniversal’s Universal Studio Group suspended their deal with Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels, among others, and that “an individual with knowledge of the situation told Variety that NBCUniversal has suspended overall deals across its studio group if the person under the deal can no longer render work due to the ongoing strike.”
Meanwhile, CBS Studios suspended their deals with Phil McGraw (aka “Dr. Phil”), DeVon Franklin (producer of BET+’s Kingdom Business), and Lis Rowinski (executive producer of Nancy Drew).
Looking beyond the A-List names
Both Variety pieces clarify how these suspensions will affect not just the multi-million-dollar writer/producers, but the folks they employ.
Overall deals between studios and production companies, in addition to paying for the company’s projects, also pay for the overhead required to run the company. So, in addition to funding the shows that, say, J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot Productions has in development, the overall deal also pays for the Bad Robot offices, as well as staff salaries and benefits. A suspended deal might not affect Abrams, whom the studio will want back when the strikes are over and who can presumably live off of his healthy savings in the meantime, but it definitely affects those he employs.
It’s interesting because we’re not only talking about the strike affecting the industry’s freelancers (writers, actors, and production crew). After all, the reason they’re on strike in the first place is precisely because they’re used to the financial instability that comes with gigging in this industry and are trying to improve those conditions. We’re now talking about studios choosing to inflict that insecurity on the salaried office employees who support the business of show by hitting pause on the source of their income with no end in sight.
A source at CBS Studios told Variety that they “will be covering salary and benefits for assistants on the term deals through the end of the strike or the end of 2023, whichever comes first.” It’s unclear whether NBCUniversal or Warner Bros. TV are doing the same.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Berlantis, Abramses, and Kalings of the industry had plans in place to provide for their employees and keep them afloat in a similar way, at least for a while. But they shouldn’t have to when there was already a deal in place providing for that. Especially when that deal isn’t being honored right now because the AMPTP is unwilling to negotiate in good faith.
Studios feel entitled to make the demands they make, because they’re the ones putting up the money and assuming “a majority of the risk.” Yet, if studios want to reap the benefits of a production company’s success, they shouldn’t then pass the burden of failure down to the workers. That’s not exactly what “taking on risk” looks like. Making slightly fewer millions of dollars isn’t a “risk” in the face of workers not being able to go to doctors or keep a roof over their heads.
These suspensions are a microcosm of bigger, systemic problems
This is why these strikes are necessary in the first place. Just as the larger burden of suspending deals rests on the shoulders of the lowest-paid freelancers, office employees, and assistants, the larger burden of the AMPTP’s refusal to negotiate seriously isn’t on the celebrity/millionaire members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA. It’s on the journeyman writers and actors whom you might never have heard of, stringing together gig after gig just to continue qualifying for health insurance and paying rent.
The AMPTP can talk about how “people just want to go back to work” all they want, but it’s clear they only actually care about some people, and they only care insofar as those few can bring in millions of dollars.
The AMPTP has tried pitting freelancers in different unions against each other by announcing suspending deals with their biggest-name producers, supporting the narrative of “wealthy” writers as “greedy” and “unreasonable” in the industry press. Meanwhile, they have no problem suspending deals that will cause regular office employees to lose their incomes. They refuse to negotiate fair minimum terms in contracts with the WGA or SAG-AFTRA, which are the terms that matter most to the lowest-paid writers and actors. It’s always about raising the floor. Bigger names can always negotiate a higher ceiling individually.
This is despite the fact that studios were willing to pay certain individual big names hundreds of millions of dollars for the exclusive right to their creativity. God forbid studios take those hundreds of millions of dollars and spread them around more evenly, nurturing the longevity of the film and TV industry instead.
While I’m sure the AMPTP hopes the optics of these suspensions will give the impression that they’re hurting for money and need to pause these deals as a “cost-saving measure,” this has never been about studios hurting for money. It’s about studios not wanting to allow their workers to have power now and preventing their workers from acquiring power in the future.
What they’re starting to understand though, even as they work with a crisis PR company to try and somehow not come off looking like Gordon Gekko to the masses, is that their workers are exercising the power they already have right now. And it’s working.
(featured image: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
