Judd Apatow Says Studios May Not Want to Quickly Resolve Writers Strike: ‘They’ve Probably Been Planning This for Years’

variety.com:

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Judd Apatow thinks the studios and streamers already have an idea of when the writers strike may end. “I think they probably already know what they’re going to bend on,” Apatow told Variety Saturday at the Rock4EB benefit in Malibu. “I would assume they already know what date this is going to end.

They’ve probably been planning this for years.” The writer-director reflected comments heard on picket lines in Los Angeles and New York after talks cratered between the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the writers union began to strike Tuesday.

Apatow explained that he sees the strike as a calculated business move by Hollywood’s largest employers. “I always think that whatever happens, they could have figured it out already.

When these things conclude, you never go, ‘I understand why it took that long.’ It’s never something so inventive, and groundbreaking, that you think, ‘Oh, people needed to go to war for months over it.’ It’s always a very obvious position,” Apatow said. “So that’s what’s scary about it is that there is a solution but I’m not sure that all of the business interests are interested in getting to it quickly.” While Apatow doesn’t currently have any projects in production directly impacted by the strike, he shares that the standstill “effects everything because we’re in development on a lot of things so you just have to stop… Then as soon as the strike ends, everybody says, ‘Oh, now we have a backlog, we don’t need anything.’” “That aspect of it complicates everything that we’re trying to do,” Apatow continued. “We’re not in the middle of anything other than writing.” Apatow says the studios and