The maddening, creativity-killing lag between the moment a writer shakes hands on an assignment and the moment a deal is actually closed marks a structural failure.

The Writers Guild of America has just secured a landmark four-year agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The deal represents a genuine achievement — hard-fought, historic in scope, and a testament to the organizing muscle the Guild has built over years of increasingly contentious labor battles. Writers won meaningful protections on artificial intelligence, strengthened residuals and raised minimums that reflect the economic realities of a business that has spent the better part of a decade restructuring itself at the writers’ expense. And yet.

There is an open secret in Hollywood that no collective bargaining agreement addresses, no trade publication investigates with any seriousness, and no executive at a studio or a talent agency is particularly motivated to fix. It is the quiet scandal of deal lethargy — the maddening, expensive, creativity-killing lag between the moment a writer shakes hands on an assignment and the moment a deal is actually closed and papered.

Six months is not unusual. Eight months happens regularly. A full year is not unheard of for what amounts to, in most cases, a paint-by-numbers transaction both sides have done dozens of times before.

The Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/deal-lethargy-writers-hollywood-1236586360/