WGA’s Chief Negotiator Ellen Stutzman Joins Picket Line At Netflix, Talks AMPTP Inaction, AI, DGA & Making A Good Deal
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: “We told them, and we told them for six weeks of negotiations, what they needed to address to meet writers demands, and have a real negotiation,” exclaims WGA Chief Negotiator Ellen Stutzman from the picket line today on the now-shuttered talks with the studios. “They refused the whole time.” Amid chants of “Hey Netflix, you’re no good/Pay your writers like you should” and hundreds of protesting guild members outside the streamer’s Sunset Boulevard HQ, longtime labor leader Stutzman is in the thick of it again. RELATED: WGA Strike Explained: The Issues, The Stakes, Movies & TV Shows Affected — And How Long It Might Last Less than 24 hours ago, Stutzman was leading the Writers Guild of America’s bargaining with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over a new three-year contract.
However, with talks having ended late Monday with the two sides far apart on money, transparency and good security and with an apparent philosophical disagreement on the basic role of scribes in the ever-changing industry, the WGA leadership declared a strike starting in the early hours of Tuesday.
As picket signs, scribes, stars and other supportive guilds and unions took to the streets of Los Angeles and New York this afternoon, the first major Hollywood labor action since the 100-day WGA strike of 2007-28 reveals an industry clearly at an inflection point. RELATED: What Went Wrong?
Writers & Studios Reveal What They Couldn’t (And Could) Agree On As Strike Is Set At the center of that, Stutzman stepped out of the picket line today to talk to Deadline about how we got here, what’s at stake, and what needs to be addressed for writers to go back to work. DEADLINE: When talks abruptly ended last night, the AMPTP sent
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