WGA West Blasts Warner Bros. Discovery Ahead Of Possible Industry-Wide Writers Strike In May - Deadline

As it prepares for negotiations for a caller movie and TV declaration – and a imaginable writers onslaught successful May – the WGA West is erstwhile again blasting Warner Bros Discovery for going backmost connected its committedness that the merger that created the elephantine media conglomerate past twelvemonth would make much opportunities for contented creators.

“WarnerMedia and Discovery promised that their merger would let the caller institution to put successful much archetypal contented and make much accidental for underrepresented storytellers,” the guild said successful a connection Monday. “Less than 1 twelvemonth aft the merger’s close, Warner Bros. Discovery has laid disconnected hundreds of workers and canceled, pulled, oregon written disconnected $2 cardinal successful content, spotlighting the predictable harms of consolidation.”

“Warner-Discovery is the latest disastrous merger to show the harms of consolidation, and peculiarly the menace to diverseness erstwhile gatekeepers harvester to summation their power,” Laura Blum-Smith, the guild’s manager of probe and nationalist policy, said successful a statement. “Almost instantly aft closing, Warner Bros. Discovery broke the hollow promises it had made of merger benefits. As a result, writers – including galore women and radical of colour – person mislaid opportunities and aboriginal income, portion consumers are near with reduced assortment and prime of content.” 

Deadline reached retired to a spokesperson for the company, and volition update this communicative with immoderate comment.

The guild’s latest denunciation of Warner Bros Discovery comes successful the signifier of a follow-up bulletin to its 2021 study “Broken Promises: Media Mega Mergers and the Case for Antitrust Reform,” which highlighted what the guild called a “failed” U.S. antitrust argumentation successful a reappraisal of 5 mega-mergers successful the media and telecommunications industry.

Warner Bros Discovery is 1 of the large companies represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers that volition beryllium bargaining with the WGA for a caller movie and TV declaration aboriginal this year. No dates person been acceptable yet for those talks. The guild’s existent declaration expires May 1, and though a strike is by nary means certain, it’s connected the apical of galore manufacture observers’ and guild members’ minds.