The Hollywood Studios Still Aren’t Serious About Ending the Writers’ Strike
Even after more than one hundred days of a nationwide strike of Hollywood writers, studio heads are monumentally out of touch with the most basic demands that those writers are unified around winning.
WGA members picketing in front of Netflix in Hollywood, California, on May 5, 2023. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)
On August 11, day 102 of the 11,500-person Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, which has largely shut down the film industry coast to coast, aided by below-the-line workers respecting picket lines and bolstered by 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), who initiated their own strike on July 14, the studios finally returned to the bargaining table.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the organization that bargains on behalf of the major studios, offered counterproposals, a long-awaited response to the WGA’s proposals. The two sides met the following week and continued to exchange proposals.
Then, on August 22, day 113 of the WGA strike, the two sides met again, but with an important addition: previous negotiating sessions had been led by AMPTP president Carol Lombardini, the studios’ hired hand, while at this one, the bosses who make the decisions were in the room.
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