Two more independent WGA deals
by
Chalk up two more wins for the WGA after Worldwide Pants, United Artists, and The Weinstein Company. Spyglass Entertainment and Media Rights Capital -- the latter of which I've never heard of, the former produced at least one movie in my tiny DVD collection -- have signed new "interim" deals with the Writers Guild of America, under terms the union has been seeking from the AMPTP for much of the past two-and-a-half months.
The AMPTP issued a statement downplaying the impact of the Spyglass and MRC interim deals, asserting, "These one-off agreements are meaningless because the companies signing them know they will not have to abide by their terms for very long, since they'll be superseded by whatever final industrywide accords are reached. If companies truly had to live by the terms of these one-off agreements, we are confident none would ever be signed."
Of course nobody actually believes such spin. Every new deal the WGA makes, the closer it gets -- however small the movements may be -- to making the AMPTP an utterly irrelevant trade association. If you'll allow for a little bit of optimism here, the strike may not end in a monumental cave by one side or the other, but end gradually one company at a time with real independent agreements restoring the old independent studio system.
If not, then these agreements will begin piling up, creating a precedent the big players simply can't ignore. They've already had their argument that the new media demands are unreasonable and unattainable, what else is there to fall back on other than "we simply don't want to share"?
Every day the AMPTP refuses to bargain in good faith, is another day passing that their more responsible and reasonable independent competition are making movies while they are not.
Leave a comment