Star Wars with occasional sarcasm
Talks have collapsed between the Writer’s Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Each blamed the other for the break down in negotiations.
Meanwhile, hundreds of production workers and others who have been laid off or lost business due to the strike took to the streets in hopes of encouraging the two sides back to the table.
Battlestar Galactica stars are supporting the WGA strike with Pencils 2 Media Moguls. Incentives? Use the names of Mary McDonnell, Tricia Helfer, Michael Hogan, Jamie Bamber, or Michael Trucco and get entered in a raffle to get a personal phone call from the actor. Upping the ante is Aaron Douglas, who will take a winning fan to a Canucks hockey game, and Jamie Bamber, who is offering three towels. It’s the actor-authorized BSG version of Liam Neeson Naked Lake Water!
All via Ron Moore’s new blog…
It was announced late Friday evening that the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers would resume negotiations on November 26.
Thankfully, this news didn’t break in time to stop the halting of work on the sequel to The Da Vinci Code.
Leave it to Joss Whedon’s fans to start a fandom movement to support the Writer’s Strike.
It all started, as many fandom things do, with food. In particular, pizza and a poster. Now they’ve joined forces with online fans from the Colbert Report and Law&Order to try and get this a bit more organized.
So if you’ve been looking for a way to support the writers, head on over to the site to see what you can do.
TFN contacted Lucasfilm to ask how the writer’s strike will affect them, and got the following statement:
“Lucasfilm has many projects in various stages of production. We do not at this point know what impact, if any, the strike will have.”
Well, it’s not like we have solid dates on any of the TV stuff to begin with… And I doubt we’d see much of anything substantial before Indy IV and TFU.
The Writers Guild of America is officially on strike after last minute negotiations failed late on Sunday night.
The probably means that John Stewart and The Colbert Report will be going into repeats (is this really why Colbert has dropped out of the presidential race?) What impact the strike will have on television series and films will depend on how long it lasts (in 1988 writers walked the pavement for 22 weeks) and whether other entertainment industry unions follow suit.
In happier news, the BBC reports that Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has confirmed that he will be going the full monty in NYC when Equus comes to Broadway next year.
Members of the Writers Guild have authorized their leaders to call a strike as early as November 1.
In mail balloting and at Thursday-night meetings on both coasts, members of the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West granted strike authority with 90.3 percent approval, representatives of the guilds said. About 5,500 of the roughly 12,000 writers covered by the unions’ contracts cast votes.
Given historically low turnout rates in guild elections, the tally was a strong show of support for the tough stance taken by guild negotiators in their discussions with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Issues of contention include residuals from DVDs and payment for content used on the internet and mobile phones.
According to The New York Times, the Blade Runner: The Final Cut answers one of the film’s most lingering questions.
The release date for Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has been pushed back six months over what is speculated to be fear about next summer’s impending actor’s strike.
Other productions which could be impacted include Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the next James Bond movie.
The actor’s strike looks set to take place in June next year and will in fact manifest itself as a combined strike by the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America (West) against the Producers Guild of America. The predicted strike has already sent Hollywood into a frenzy of planning, with many studios reportedly accelerating production of films to avoid gaps in their release schedules.
The strike is over royalties from sales of movies over the internet and on DVD, which are not covered in the current deal between the various guilds.
Grrrr. Argh.