Source: Deadline Hollywood Daily

I was surprised this morning to discover that the Writer’s Guild struck a deal with United Artists (the studio headed by Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner) that will allow the studio to develop screenplays during the writer’s strike.

This is all part of the WGA’s new “divide and conquer” strategy (as explained by Nikki Finke), which resulted in David Letterman and Craig Ferguson getting to use writers on their talk shows, while others like Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel have to improvise everything. The WGA is hoping that by making deals with individual companies, the AMPTP will be forced to concede to the WGA’s demands.

Although the UA deal is only the 2nd of its kind (and UA is technically a very tiny studio… the actual impact is questionable), it’s clear that the WGA’s negotiations with individual companies are working. What makes it a blow for AMPTP’s cause is that United Artists agreed to the exact demands that the WGA put on the table for AMPTP, which amounts to a “if UA can do it, AMPTP can” scenario. Plus, it’s a win-win for United Artists, because if the WGA and AMPTP resolve their issues and end up with lesser demands, the UA can (and will) cancel their interim agreement and take part in the lesser deal.

However, the question now is, what was the motivation behind the deals? Is it an honest desire to agree with the WGA’s demands, or is it a desperate need to resume work? While Letterman’s Worldwide Pants is a pretty successful company, I don’t believe it’s big; aside from producing Letterman and Ferguson’s shows, it makes one, maybe two, other television shows each year (it used to produce Everybody Loves Raymond).

United Artist may in fact be smaller than Worldwide Pants. Since its rebirth in 2006, its only output so far was the financial and critical bomb Lions for Lambs, and its next release, the Bryan Singer-helmed Valkyrie, has been getting some negative press and has in fact just been pushed from a summer release to winter, which is never a good sign. According to IMDB, it only has 2 other projects lined up, neither of which are on anyone’s radar.

Is the WGA trying to hit the smaller companies first? Did UA go to WGA first, or vice-versa? These and so many other questions need to be answered before we can understand whether WGA’s divide-and-conquer strategy is actually working, before it’s too late.

Posted on January 5th, 2008 by Enrique
Filed under: Opinion, WGA Strike