WGA Slams Studios’ Latest Offer & Meeting As Attempt To Make Guild “Cave”; “Not To Bargain, But To Jam Us”

deadline.com:

Just hours after the studios and streamers made public their latest “comprehensive package” towards a deal with the WGA, the guild has responded – and its seems the AMPTP and top CEOs may have strategically overplayed their hand.

In fact, talks may have broken down altogether — again. “On Monday of this week, we received an invitation to meet with Bob Iger, Donna Langley, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav, and Carol Lombardini,” the WGA Negotiating Committee said in an email just sent out to members (see the full WGA email to members below). “It was accompanied by a message that it was past time to end this strike and that the companies were finally ready to bargain a deal,” the note adds.

of the meeting held tonight. “We accepted that invitation and, in good faith, met tonight, in hopes that the companies were serious about getting the industry back to work.” At this point in their succinct note to members, the WGA unveil a very different POV on what went down with Iger, Sarandos and gang and the August 11 proposal they put forth — at least very different from the hyperboles the AMPTP put out there earlier Tuesday.

The guild’s perspective reads much more that the AMPTP were trying to hype the whole thing and score some much needed PR points tonight than they were seeking an end to Hollywood’s ongoing production shutdown and labor strife.“Instead, on the 113th day of the strike – and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side – we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was,” the Ellen Stutzman, David Goodman and Chris Keyser-led Negotiating Committee says of the off-site sit-down with the CEOs and AMPTP chief. “But this wasn’t a meeting to make a deal.