Fine, studios will give negotiating with the WGA another shot

Well, well, well. Look who’s returning to the bargaining table. Earlier tonight, the WGA announced that their talks with the AMPTP would resume this Friday, hopefully heading toward a resolution. “The AMPTP, through Carol Lombardini, reached out to the WGA today and requested a meeting this Friday to discuss negotiations,” said a note to WGA members. “We’ll be back in communication with you sometime after the meeting with further information. As we’ve said before, be wary of rumors. Whenever there is important news to share, you will hear it directly from us.”

This would be great, especially considering anonymous studio executives were hoping to drag the strike out until writers were left homeless and destitute, in one of those continuing signs of goodwill we’ve seen over the last three months. Of course, there’s a lot at stake that the studios do not want to give up, including higher wages, staffing requirements, job security, guardrails on A.I., and residuals for streaming shows. But it has been nearly 100 days since the two parties met—enough time for another massive industry union to go on strike—so maybe the AMPTP is willing to concede that attempting to starve out writers wasn’t such a hot idea. After all, writers are an exceptionally adaptable bunch and are pretty adept at not making money for long periods of time. It’s like challenging a sea turtle to a breath-holding contest.

Per Variety, the AMPTP has been planning a return to the bargaining table over the past week, presumably after two well–written movies cleaned up at the box office and signaled that maybe A.I.-generated scripts wouldn’t cut it. Nothing brings people together quite like making a shit-ton of money, and if these studios want to make more of it, they’re going to need writers to write some movies.