WGA rejected WME’s latest proposal, which would end its long-term legal battle and stated that “WME has not seriously resolved its own conflicts of interest.” WME sent a new proposal to the guild on December 22. If the proposal is The guild accepts that it will end WGA’s 20-month boycott against the agency. WME stated last week that it “has updated the terms of our proposal and has submitted it to WGA, which is in good faith and aims to advance our discussions. We want to find a way forward with the association and return to represent us Writer clients. We are willing and willing to meet with the guild as soon as possible, including during the holidays, in order to reach a solution.”
However, the guild’s agent negotiating committee stated that the agency’s proposal was unacceptable because its terms were more favorable than the agreement reached with CAA on December 16, making WME the last to not sign the WGA franchise agreement. The main organization will cancel the packaging costs in stages and limit the ownership of subordinate production companies to 20%.
“I would like to remind you that on September 1, we announced that the UTA/ICM franchise agreement between CAA and WME will not be changed, but terms need to be negotiated to mitigate additional conflicts of interest for these institutions. On December 16, CAA signed UTA/ICM franchise agreement, and an accompanying letter, which lists important additional terms and protections regarding CAA’s production company, wiip and private equity owners of the institution. Within one hour of signing the CAA agreement, WME The public announcement of the transaction “… also pointed the way forward for WME to reach an agreement. ”
“On December 23, WME sent a franchise agreement and accompanying letter proposal to WGA, and issued a toll route to writers and towns to provide this way. In fact, WME’s proposal has greatly changed the CAA supplement The letter and franchise agreements have repeatedly weakened the basic protection these agreements provide for writers.
Therefore, you can judge for yourself. Here are some examples: • CAA and TPG (CAA’s private equity owners) gave up all operational control of Wiip and placed it in a blind trust managed by a third-party trustee, and Agree to sell it to no more than 20% before the deadline for reaching an agreement with WGA. These protective measures mean that when the writer returns to his agent, the guild can be sure that CAA and TPG will comply with their bargaining agreement. WME and its private equity owner Silver Lake Partners did not propose to blindly trust its ownership interest in Endeavor Content. WME proposes to allow them to immediately sign the franchise agreement and return to the representative writer, even if they and Silver Lake still have control of Endeavor Content.
• CAA agrees to penalize actions that fail to reach the 20% ownership limit before the agreed date, such as placing all wiip commissions and package fees in the hands of the custodian, and possibly suspending CAA’s franchise agreement. The WME proposal rejected all penalties for failing to comply with its obligation to withdraw funds from Endeavor Content.
• CAA and TPG agree not to own or own more than 20% of Wiip. WME insists that entities owned by them and Silver Lake may jointly own more than 20% of Endeavor Content.
• The UTA/ICM/CAA franchise agreement enables all agent shareholders to be bound by the terms of the agreement, regardless of their ownership interest in the agent.
WME hopes to exempt shareholders with less than 20% of agents from the conflict of interest regulations, which means that shareholders who own 19% of WME can also own 100% of the studio. This will greatly weaken the protection of existing franchise agreements.
• The UTA/ICM/CAA franchise agreement does not allow the exemption of 20% ownership restrictions on existing projects.
WME insists on owning Endeavor Content items currently in production or already in production without restrictions, including subsequent seasons, sequels and derivative products. They use packaging as an analogy. But the guild knew from the beginning that the original software package was allowed to be retained only because it was impossible to recover the past commission from the writer. There is no such parallelism in subsidiary production.
This is not an exhaustive list of the different ways in which WME proposes to sign the franchise agreement with every other agency in the business and the supplementary letter signed by CAA. However, it is sufficient to show that WME has not seriously resolved its own conflict of interest.
WME is right in this regard: CAA transactions do represent the way forward-the way forward. WME waited until all other organizations in the town found a way to cooperate with the guild and return to the writer representative. In the past 20 months, most people have been on the sidelines, so WME will not receive the “going out” bonus-unable to accommodate them is the most conflicting fact among all agencies-and will not do anything to our existing transactions The changes to weaken the struggle of the writers for nearly two years were realized.
If WME wishes to represent the writers again, then they and Silver Lake can agree to the terms of the franchise agreement and accompanying letter linked here.
Post time: Dec-30-2020
