Studios start axing deals
Now the WGA writers strike is getting ugly for the long haul; the kind of ugly that a simple exchange of religious jewelry cannot solve.
In a trend started last week by ABC and taken up this week by Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox TV, CBS Paramount Network TV and Universal Media Studios, Hollywood’s leading studios have decided to cut costs by axing the development deals of several writer-producer teams whose output has halted as a result of the strike.
The move is seen largely as a counter-move to the WGA’s decision to come to individual agreements between the WGA and certain studios, like David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants, a deal which allowed the CBS late night host to return from hiatus with his staff of writers intact.
By axing the writer-producer deals with these studios, the studios are cutting their costs but are also freeing up a lot of creative talent from their current obligations, so that when the labor agreement is finally settled, there could be a lot of “free agent” producers available whose services could induce a bidding war.
But before that can happen, a labor agreement must be reached; unfortunately, the move of studio owners to ax existing deals in the middle of the strike is likely to result in a strike that is much longer, more bitter and increasing entrenched, rather than one that will be resolved more quickly.
