The fight over the impending SAG strike has gotten uglier, now with an anonymous emailer urging the Hollywood community to awards-boycott eight well-known actors who do not support a referendum that would authorize a strike.
As pro-strike SAG members gathered around their mediation menorahs to light a tiny Eric Bogosian head on fire, thereby commemorating the second night of Yea-nukkah, they were met with a shocking development:
Happy news emerged this morning from the deep, dank reaches of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers headquarters, where it was announced the major studios have come to last-minute terms with AFTRA on a new three-year contract. Conveniently or not, the report comes a few hours before AFTRA's former…
Mere days after the meltdown of their negotiating partnership in upcoming labor talks with film and TV producers, SAG president Alan Rosenberg and AFTRA boss Ron Morgan appeared at a press conference Tuesday to proclaim their unity in the face of looming crisis — at least when it comes to walking 25 miles from…
There's nothing inherently sexy about the ongoing labor disputes between producers and writers, producers and directors, producers and actors and whatever other banal kerfuffles you care to conjure. But the SAG/AFTRA square-off pitting actors against producers and themselves is quite a tentpole-ready disaster in the…
· Good news, advertisers, entertainment journalists, and fans of overblown montages of new shows that will likely be canceled before December: The upfronts are back on! The networks may continue them in some modified form, but it seems as if they're planning on maintaining the most crucial part of the tradition:…
· Paramount breaks the hearts of the millions of Trekkies who thought they'd be spending Christmas at the multiplex with Kirk, Spock and Uhura, delaying their J.J. Abrams directed Star Trek from this December 25 until May 8, 2009 in hopes that they can wring more money from the franchise during the summer blockbuster…
Yesterday, Variety reported that several Big Name Actors were about to kick off a public campaign to shame convince SAG's leadership and the studios to pick up a phone and arrange the kind of pleasant little rap session with moguls like News Corps' Peter Chernin, Disney's Bob Iger and CBS's Les "Negotiations Are…
· 24 co-creator/primetime-torture advocate Joel Surnow is leaving the series to follow his muse, having previously ceded day-to-day control of the show to fellow executive producer Howard Gordon. Surnow explains his decision to officially pass on Jack Bauer's interrogation-speeding belt-sander to his colleagues:…
The strike is over! Everyone's back to work! As expected, the WGA voted overwhelmingly to dance off the pickets lines and back to their sitcom writers rooms, deadline-rushed screenplays begging for punch-up, and blank Final Draft screens, with 92.5% of its membership agreeing to usher in a new, internet-enabled era…
Today's LAT picks the strike-weary brains of four TV showrunners who are returning to work after three weeks of agonizing about the fates of their series, storylines they were forced to abandon, and early-draft scripts they may soon need to rush into production, hoping to illustrate the back-to-work chaos facing a…
Moving decisively into the Post-Strike Era that began with today's Return of The Showrunners Parade on Hollywood Blvd., ABC has already picked up nine—nine!—of its series for next season, giving Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers & Sisters and Ugly Betty full orders, while giving 13 episode each to…
· Network executives are trying to make sense of the brave, new, post-strike world they suddenly find themselves in, either taking this unprecedented opportunity to blow up their development system, or shrugging it off as a "blip" and going back to the old, comfortable ways of doing business (i.e., throwing a bunch…
With word arriving over the weekend that Saturday night's WGA Scribeapalooza II: Let's Call the Whole Thing Off event at the Shrine Auditorium sent TV showrunners back to work today and will return everyone else to their jobs on Wednesday pending the outcome of a strike-ending vote to be counted tomorrow night,…
· Possibly sandwiched between the theoretically imminent end of the writers strike and a potential June 30 walkout by SAG, studios are rushing to get their high-profile projects into production during that slim window of opportunity, hoping to get enough movies in the can to fill out their late 2009 release…
Defying both the media blackout and the current spirit of Cautious Optimism keeping the industry from throwing a premature Everybody's Going Back to Work! Parade on Hollywood Boulevard before a new WGA contract is signed, former Disney boss and current trading-card magnate Michael Eisner declared an end to the…
· Anxious that the Oscars are approaching and he still has no real idea of whether or the WGA—obviously a little preoccupied with their own issues—intends to grant a waiver for their awards ceremony, Academy president Sid Ganis begs the Guild for answers so that complicated logistical issues can be resolved. "We're…
· Mattel joins fellow toy manufacturer Hasbro in leaping into CAA's embrace, turning over brands like American Girl, Hot Wheels and Fisher-Price to the agency for potentially lucrative Hollywood exploitation. First order of business: attaching artificially smooth client Nicole Kidman to a live-action Barbie project…
On this second day of the New Era of Cautious Optimism ushered in by Friday's "informal" bargaining session between Writers Guild negotiators and studio CEOs—when WGA West president Patric Verrone's repeated striking of Disney's Bob Iger with a foam EncounterBat™ led to a critical, tearful breakthrough on the…
In case you were too consumed with your Super Bowl preparations to scroll through the scores of "THE STRIKE IS OVER!!!" e-mails filling up your BlackBerry, various reports touting "progress" fueled by a breakthrough in Friday's informal deal-chat surfaced over the weekend, filling Hollywood with the kind of cautious…
