Studio CEOs Attend Latest Writers Guild Bargaining Session

Confirming the feeling of urgency taking hold around town to resolve the historic, ongoing writers strike, a group of top CEOs attended Wednesday’s bargaining session between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley were all present at the meeting that began around 10 a.m. PT, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. It’s highly unusual for the industry bargaining representative, the AMPTP, to include CEOs directly in bargaining sessions, which are usually led on the studio and streamer side by labor relations representatives and top AMPTP staffers. But the industry-wide crisis resulting from the ongoing writers and actors strikes has pushed company leaders to become more directly involved in talks.

Said one studio-side source with knowledge of Wednesday’s negotiations, “CEOs have cleared their calendars and want to sit and have a real conversation.” This person added that the WGA submitted a list of issues in order of importance, from thorniest to least thorny, to the studio side prior to the meeting. “This is so long in coming; everyone’s feeling pain. Let’s get in there and nail things down,” the source said.

The meeting concluded in the late afternoon, with talks set to resume again on Thursday with all four CEOs present, according to a studio-side source.

THR has gone to the WGA and the AMPTP for comment.

One studio-side source says company leaders pregamed the negotiation in a Zoom prior to Wednesday’s bargaining session. “They feel the smaller the group, the more meaningful it will be. They want to get in a room and figure it all out,” this person said.

After weeks with a dearth of official talks, the AMPTP announced on Sept. 14 that the parties would finally return to the table the following week. The Writers Guild of America said in its own message to members that “you might not hear from us in the coming days while we are negotiating, but know that our focus is getting a fair deal for writers as soon as possible.”

One veteran showrunner notes of the union’s message, “I took from the guild’s language in email [to members] that they expect real negotiations. Not to talk for a little while. They didn’t say that for the last time they spoke with the AMPTP. They are at least hoping/expecting something real.”

This isn’t the first time company leaders have dealt directly with the WGA amid the 2023 labor conflict. On Aug. 22, WGA leaders met with Iger, Langley, Zaslav, Sarandos and AMPTP president Carol Lombardini in a gathering that went south. Not long after the meeting, the AMPTP released its Aug. 11 offer to the union, adding that the organization was “deeply committed to ending the strike and are hopeful that the WGA will work toward the same resolution.” In its own communication about the meeting, the union claimed that in their meeting with top executives, “we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was” and decried the latest offer’s “limitations and loopholes and omissions.”

Studio leaders cleared their schedules in preparation for Wednesday’s discussion to go late, a preliminary measure that ended up not being necessary.

Kim Masters contributed reporting.

Sept. 20, 4:49 p.m. Updated with news that talks were scheduled again for Thursday.