What I’m Hearing: DGA Deal Politics & the Con Queen

Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, after a big weekend in Hollywood’s labor wars. Programming notes: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I asked why Disney went so big at Cannes, and producer (and former network/studio chief) Gail Berman explained why the studios won’t just pay the writers. Subscribe here and here.
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Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, after a big weekend in Hollywood’s labor wars.

Programming notes: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I asked why Disney went so big at Cannes, and producer (and former network/studio chief) Gail Berman explained why the studios won’t just pay the writers. Subscribe here and here.

Discussed in this issue: David Zaslav, Jon Avnet, Amy Pascal, Jeff Zucker, Rich Gelfond, Tom Cruise, Kathy Kennedy, Casey Wasserman, Sherry Lansing, Stacey Snider, Chris Nolan, Chris Licht, Ken Lerer… and the Con Queen of Hollywood.

But first…

Who Won the Week: Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Easy one. The Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse writer-producers worked with many collaborators, but after being fired by...

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Strike Politics: What the Directors Deal Means for Writers and Actors

The devil’s in the details as the DGA makes a quick (and probably not “historic”) three-year contract, the actors weigh a walkout and the writers strike presses on.

JONATHAN HANDEL

Last night, the Directors Guild and the studios reached a tentative deal, as we first reported. But is the pact as “truly historic” as DGA negotiations committee chair Jon Avnet claims? And how will the new agreement affect the ongoing Writers Guild strike, now in its second month, and the SAG-AFTRA negotiations, set to begin...

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