Billy Ray and Todd Garner are back for Week 6 of the Writers Guild standoff on Deadline’s Strike Talk podcast. Click below to listen.
This week, our hosts look at what the seismic developments of the past week will mean. Hailing it as groundbreaking, the Directors Guild agreed tentatively to a deal, and will bring it to membership shortly. At the same time, about 48% of SAG-AFTRA members cast votes on whether to authorize an actors strike if a deal isn’t struck the month’s end, and an overwhelming 97.91% of those voting gave the guild a strike authorization. Armed with that resolve, the guild has just began negotiating with the AMPTP, while there’s still no progress on getting back to the table with the writers.
The WGA picket line presence is still being felt: While DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter saw her guild make a tentative deal, the series whose episodes she has been directing — Zero Day starring Robert De Niro — was shuttered by Netflix and unlikely to resume until September.
Billy Ray also goes into some labor history, and grills U.S. Reps. Ro Khanna and Becca Balint on how the Hollywood work stoppage is projecting in Washington, DC. Khanna is a California congressman representing a district that includes Silicon Valley, and Balint represents Vermont. Both are Democrats.
