After Mega-Writer Suspensions, Industry Braces for More Blows

Greg Berlanti. J.J. Abrams. Bill Lawrence. Mindy Kaling.

On the evening of Sept. 7, a flurry of headlines confirmed that Warner Bros. Television Group had suspended their deals and several others that had remained quietly active since the WGA strike began in early May. The news came as a shock to some, who hadn’t realized a cade of TV’s biggest names were still drawing a paycheck and a harbinger of coming pain for others. Sources across the studio and streaming landscape predict more suspensions will come, largely in the non-writing executive producer ranks, in the weeks ahead. As one studio exec put it, “Warner Bros. just gave everyone else cover.” Added another: “We’d been waiting for someone else to go first.” 

To be sure, the first wave of suspensions came in the spring — and by all accounts, was swift and extensive. It included the vast majority of pure writer deals and many major overalls, from Mike Schur and Sam Esmail (Universal TV/Universal Content Productions) to Chuck Lorre and John Wells (Warners). More recent suspensions include pacts for Dan Fogelman (20th TV), Dan Levy (Netflix), Donald Glover and Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan (Amazon).

One studio chief explains their calculus this way: “If you were in active post or production on something and willing to work [in a non-writing capacity], we’d keep paying you. If you didn’t have anything or didn’t want to work, we stopped.” Additionally, there are some high-profile producers who have deal language (called a selectivity clause) that doesn’t allow the studio to suspend them unless other top producers are suspended as well, which may explain why multiple blows came at once.

The studio rationale for keeping those writer-driven pods whose deals remain active four-plus months into the strike: some are attached to ongoing animation and reality projects; others were still rendering meaningful post-production services on key shows. Shonda Rhimes, whose The Residence stopped filming in the spring after running out of scripts, and the Duffer brothers are among the Netflix pacts that are still active. Over at the Paramount Global-owned studios, sources say both Jerry Bruckheimer (whose company has both alternative and unscripted fare including The Amazing Race) and Taylor Sheridan have yet to have their production deals suspended. Even Warners still has three active deals — Matt Reeves (who’s finishing Max’s The Penguin), Andy and Barabara Muschietti (Max’s It prequel Welcome to Derry) and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Max’s Pretty Little Liars revival) — though those are expected to be suspended once post work is done.  

At Warners, led by Channing Dungey, execs are said to have waited as long as they could before suspending what was left of their active deals. The Paramount- and Disney-owned studios as well as Amazon are among the dominoes expected to fall next. “Disney has been very nice about their non-writing executive producer deals. That will change,” says one knowledgeable source, with another one adding of Amazon: “Those that haven’t been suspended will soon.” At this stage, none of Lionsgate’s deals remain active; and while Sony TV suspended every writer on its roster back in May, it agreed to dole out weekly deals for producing services (the studio still has active non-writing deals as well). Each of the aforementioned studios declined to comment.

 “At the end of the day, we’re in the business of making television and after four months of a writers strike and two months of an actors strike, there’s no TV left to make, [and we] can’t keep paying out all that overhead and not making anything in return,” says one studio exec. Another one echoes: “At a certain point, studios can no longer just fund work that can’t be completed.” The decisions regarding how and whether to continue to pay employees at these suspended pods now fall to folks like Berlanti, who, at least for the time being, is said to still be paying his staff. (He and Ryan Murphy, whose deal at Netflix has expired, also announced strike relief funds, with the duo each committing $500,000.)

In an era of heavy cost-cutting, many industry watchers predicted that by this point in the strike, the studio would have terminated a slew of deals under force majeure clauses, but that has yet to happen. If the stoppage drags on, some execs predict terminations could become unavoidable, particularly at the more vulnerable studios. But, for the time being, almost all of the deals impacted have been suspensions rather than outright terminations, and many will come with extensions to make up for the lost time. The reason? Multiple studio and streaming sources say their deal rosters had already been culled pre-strike. The bulk of overall deals that remain are ones that they often aggressively pursued in a competitive marketplace and still want to be in business with once the strikes end. “It’s not like we’re trying to pick people off,” said one studio chief. 

Optics factor in, too. For those deals that studios no longer want, execs say that they are now more likely to simply let them expire than to actively terminate. As one showrunner puts it, “The temperature is so hot, it would only inflate things.” Added an agency partner: “And these studios can’t afford another wave of bad optics, they need a deal to get done.”