“Why is this guy picking a fight with Mickey Mouse?” Bill Maher asked Ron DeSantis tonight of the poll lagging Florida Governor’s ongoing jurisdictional and legal battles with the Walt Disney Company over the last year. “Well, first of all, they picked a fight with us,” a literally suited and cowboy booted DeSantis defensively replied
WGA Strike
EXCLUSIVE: For some writer-producers, the enthusiasm over going back to work this week was dampened by the news that their overall deals, suspended during the WGA strike, are being reinstated but not extended. Nowhere has this been more prevalent than Universal Studio Group, which includes Universal Television and UCP. The company has reinstated all of
(Updated with more deal details) After almost five months, the Writers Guild’s strike will be officially over at 12:01 am PT Wednesday. “Today, your Negotiating Committee, the WGAW Board and WGAE Council all voted unanimously to recommend the agreement,” the guild said today of tentative agreement worked out with the studios and streamers on Sunday.
WGA members who will lose their health coverage on October 1 will be granted extended coverage through the end of the year, per the guild’s tentative agreement. The extension also applies to writers who will exhaust their COBRA benefits eligibility. WGA members will soon be voting to ratify the new deal. Union health plans have
Big media shares, which rose in pre-market trading Monday, opened lower at the bell and are still trending down midday after the Writers Guild reached a tentative deal with studios to end their prolonged strike. Renewed market jitters over inflation, interest rates and a potential government shutdown appeared to have offset relief that Hollywood is
As the WGA and the AMPTP begin meeting again to try and hash out a deal, members of the guild are back out on the picket line. Deadline understands that a group of around 35 writers have come out on a Sunday to picket Dancing with the Stars at TV City. It is the latest
EXCLUSIVE: The roller coaster ride of the Writers Guild and the Hollywood studios trying to seal a deal to end the writers’ nearly 5-month-long strike isn’t over yet. After a day many thought would see an agreement between the WGA and the AMPTP finalized, it looks like things are on pause — at least until
About six weeks after the Writers Guild of America went on strike for the first time in more than 15 years, eight seasons of Suits landed on Netflix. All nine seasons had already been available on Peacock, but the “Netflix effect” rapidly proved itself once again. The streamer unexpectedly struck gold. In its first week
After Drew Barrymore, Bill Maher, Jennifer Hudson and The Talk reversed course on premiering their talk shows, some WGA members are now focusing on Dancing with the Stars and questioning why the dance competition is moving forward with its Sept. 26 return to ABC. Picketing writers like David Slack have used X to remind fellow
Bill Maher is the latest host to postpone his return to work. Maher said that Real Time with Bill Maher will not, as previously planned, return to HBO on September 22. He joins the likes of Drew Barrymore and The Talk in delaying returning to the studio. Over the weekend, a slew of hosts including
This is Day 128 of the WGA strike and Day 55 of the SAG-AFTRA strike. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul paid a surprise visit to striking writers and actors outside Netflix offices in Manhattan on Wednesday, making good on what one union officer said was a “very, very last-minute” decision to briefly join the picket line and meet strike
Coming out of the public relation week from Hell, the studios and streamers are looking for the firm that fought off Pizzagate to help them in the war of words against the striking Writers Guild. After literally and figuratively misreading the room with the release earlier this week of their August 11 proposal to the
This is Day 115 of the WGA strike and Day 42 of the SAG-AFTRA strike. “I can’t believe I’m headlining this,” Tony Gilroy quipped Thursday as the last speaker at a Writers Guild picket in New York City honoring screenwriters. The Andor creator-writer and Bourne Legacy screenwriter followed three of his contemporaries — former WGA East President Beau Willimon, Mauricio Zacharias and James
After four straight days of bargaining, the Writers Guild said tonight that it will meet again next week with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. “Last Friday, 102 days after they walked away from the bargaining table and put us out on strike, the AMPTP offered responses to our proposals in all work
Editors note: One in a series of stories marking the 100th day of the WGA strike. The writers strike has hit Day 100 – the point at which the last walkout by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) ended in 2007/08. It’s a significant juncture, one that Chris Keyser and David A. Goodman, who co-chair the
James Holzhauer is taking aim at Jeopardy! producers after they announced that Season 40 of the show would continue amid the writers strike. The Jeopardy! champion took to social media to call out producers of the game show after Michael Davies revealed on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast that the new season would recycle questions and
This is Day 93 of the WGA strike and Day 20 of the SAG-AFTRA strike. The talk of the picket lines today was the bombshell news that studios and striking writers are headed back to the bargaining table Friday. “It’s a baby step, and baby steps lead us eventually to the finish line,” Barry and
“Some kids have more baggage than others,” Teenie (Tamara Podemski) tells her niece Elora Postoak (Devery Jacobs) on the road home to Oklahoma from California in the opener of the third and final season of Reservation Dogs. Once again tossing expectations aside and centering in on the personal to find the political, the “BUSSIN’ “episode
Sarah Silverman isn’t so pissed off any more about the interim agreements that SAG-AFTRA has been handing out, but the comedian is still pretty “cynical” about the whole thing. Less than 48 hours after talking to social media to rail against about the dozens of deals the striking 160,000-member strong guild is making which allow
Mike Cavanagh, the president of Comcast who was recently named the de-facto head of NBC Universal, said the company remains “committed to reaching a fair deal [with actors and writers[ as soon as possible, so we can get back to doing what we do best, which making great content together.” In a change, he kicked
It’s Day 11 of the SAG-AFTRA strike and Day 84 of the WGA strike. On a Monday that saw Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez join the picket lines in front of Warner Bros Discovery in New York, a mother and son became strike demonstrators Monday as both actors and writers picketed in front of Paramount in Los Angeles. The pair —
At a time when the industry is suffering through historic dual strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the motion picture industry is poised to see an enormous weekend at the box office with Warner Bros./Mattel’s long awaited toy feature adaptation Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s World War II era three-hour adult drama Oppenheimer reaping a combined
Treegate just became a thing. City Controller Kenneth Mejia has vowed to look into the newly pruned Ficus trees outside of Universal’s Gate 8, after picketers drew attention to their thinned branches while marching in 90-degree-plus heat. Pine trees on the opposite side of Barham weren’t touched, and neither were a row of pepper trees
What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise
The Writers Guild will picket Amazon’s upcoming “Prime Day,” the retail giant’s biggest sales event of the year. Recasting it as “Crime Day,” the guild says it will take to social media to let the company know, “We won’t let Amazon turn Hollywood into a gig economy with its Silicon Valley business practices.” The guild,
EXCLUSIVE: As talks between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP continue this week, actors are getting a head start on picket planning should negotiations end in a stalemate at midnight on July 12 and lead to a double strike alongside the Writers Guild. It comes after SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP agreed Friday to extend their current film
The Writers Guild of America West is holding officer and board elections in the middle of its ongoing strike, which is now in its 51st day. Incumbent president Meredith Stiehm is seeking reelection and will face off against Rich Talarico – both of whom were selected by the guild’s nominating committee. In the race for
Alex Newell of Shucked and J. Harrison Ghee of Some Like It Hot broke ground Sunday night as the first openly nonbinary Tony Award winners. Newell won for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical and Ghee for Best Actor in a Lead Role in a Musical. Both drew huge ovations with acceptance
It feels like Covid all over again, but it’s not. Disney has just made a slew of release-date changes, many due to the impact of the WGA strike and screenplays not being ready and productions paused. We already know that Thunderbolts and Blade are waiting the strike out before rolling cameras. Scripts aren’t fully ready
It’s safe to say that today’s picket line at Warner Bros in Burbank drew a little more attention than some other days. That’s because newly unionized strippers from North Hollywood turned out to support striking WGA writers — and they brought a pole along. Have a look at some images and video from Strippers Day