If the goal of the AMPTP was to minimize disruption, it’s safe to say that it has fallen short of those ambitions. Right now the trade organization appears to be playing hardball at the expense of, well, just about everyone. From film crews waiting to get back to work, to exasperated exhibitors watching release dates get pushed back, to the studios themselves starving their production pipelines and taking hits at the box office.
It’s a lot of fun to watch Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav being drowned out by boos and chants of “Pay your writers!” during his attempt at a university commencement speech. But it’s actually quite hard to pin down what exactly is the driving force behind the AMPTP’s intransigence. Some lay the blame with the organization’s current president, Carol Lombardi, for using an outdated playbook. Other corners of the rumor mill point to specific AMPTP members for refusing to budge on certain issues.
It’s easy to see how that might cause friction. One of the biggest sticking points in negotiations with both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA is transparency over streaming numbers; the guilds want a clearer picture of viewership for the purpose of fairly distributing streaming residuals. Studios like Disney, Netflix, and Warner Bros. Discovery really don’t want to share that information. This means that other major AMPTP members like Sony and Lionsgate, which don’t have their own streaming platforms, are stuck dying on a hill that they probably don’t even care about.