Entertainment - Media News Watch originally published at Entertainment - Media News Watch
Production has hit a hard pause on the Blake Lively romance adaptation It Ends With Us until the ongoing writers strike is resolved.
Wayfarer Studios is co-financing the feature which will be distributed by Sony. Production in New Jersey had already paused on June 5 due to picketing before Wayfarer and director-star Justin Baldoni notified cast and crew on Thursday that the film was being shut down until the end of the strike.
Screen understands the producers have every intention of resuming production as soon as possible. There is still more than half of the film to shoot.
Sony’s status as a signatory to the Writers Guild Of America’s (WGA) 2020 minimum basic agreement means it is a struck company during a strike and Guild members are forbidden from working on re-writes during production.
Hollywood’s strike climate has cast an unsettling pall over the business and another factor in pausing the production may well be that the town is potentially two weeks away from a SAG-AFTRA strike.
The actors are currently negotiating contract renewals with AMPTP and should talks end without agreement by the June 30 contract expiry, SAG-AFTRA can tell its members to go on strike any time after July 1 – and they have already voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike should they be authorised to do so.
A WGA strike compounded by an actors strike would be a devastating development, essentially shutting down Hollywood and impacting production on US films with Guild members anywhere in the world.
The Directors Guild Of America members have until June 23 to vote on whether or not to ratify their recent tentative agreement with AMPTP.
Earlier this week Members of the Writers’ Guild Of Great Britain including Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong, Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical writer Dennis Kelly and Slumdog Millionaire and The Full Monty screenwriter Simon Beaufoy took part in a London protest as part of a global solidarity day in support of the WGA.
Kelly urged streaming platforms to address the demands of the striking writers at a time of drastically conflicting fortunes, telling Screen “streamers are making a lot of money while writers are making less and less”.
Referring to the WGA’s demands for better residuals from streamers which would require increased transparency on streaming data, Beaufoy said: “I still get paid from a studio movie I did 25 years ago, I still get cheques. The
Entertainment - Media News Watch originally published at Entertainment - Media News Watch
