Deadline has reported that the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are set to return to negotiations next week. On Thursday, the AMPTP said they were “working to schedule meeting next week,” reports Deadline.
According to Deadline, the AMPTP stated, “On Wednesday, September 13, the WGA reached out to the AMPTP and asked for a meeting to move negotiations forward. We have agreed and are working to schedule a meeting next week. Every member company of the AMPTP is committed and eager to reach a fair deal, and to working together with the WGA to end the strike.”
A “Negotiations Update” email sent out to members from the negotiating committee led by Chris Keyser (Time of Your Life, The Society), Ellen Stutzman, and David Goodman (Family Guy, Futurama), said, “The WGA and AMPTP are in the process of scheduling a time to get back in the room,” Deadline reported.
Over the past four months the WGA has consistently shown a desire to have substantial talks with the AMPTP.
Also according to Deadline, last week the WGA told its members that multiple AMPTP companies privately expressed “both the desire and willingness to negotiate an agreement that adequately addresses writers’ issues,” despite the united front in public.
On September 8, the AMPTP stated that the companies are “aligned and are negotiating together to reach a resolution. Any suggestion to the contrary is false,” according to Deadline.
The AMPTP includes NBCUniversal, Paramount, Sony, Disney, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple.
The WGA strike has been ongoing since May 2. The AMPTP gave an initial counteroffer on August 11 and the WGA gave counterproposals on August 15. Deadline reported that the CEOS suddenly called a meeting with the WGA and released information on August 22 that unsuccessfully attempted to go around the guild and straight to the members.