PENCILS DOWN?
LegalDispatch 0.59*
*Yeah, I mis-numbered again…
WORK UPDATE
Man, it’s been a week. Over the weekend, I turned in the script for the fifth issue of Star Trek: Echoes and this week I delivered the first draft of PROJECT MARBLE to the producers and just emailed off a new draft of the Too Dead To Die screenplay. A lot of writing in an insanely short amount of time (so as to get everything finished before the WGA strike**).
And I just received an offer on a spec feature I wrote forever ago and now I need to do a quick polish before the strike deadline as well.
STAR TREK: ECHOES
Speaking of Star Trek: Echoes, one of my favorite magazines, SFX, had a little piece about the forthcoming series which I’ve shamelessly reproduced below:
ANOTHER COVER
I know I dumped a ton of variant covers last week, but a new variant — and one of my new faves, so I just have to share — was just announced for X-Men: Days of Future Past - Doomsday. It’s part of Marvel’s “Saturday Morning Variants” series and drawn by Sean Galloway. You can check it out below:
ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER AI ARTICLE
This time, it was Morning Consult who reached out for a few thoughts. I’m in good company with this one with contributions from the likes of the brilliant Damon Lindelof. You can check it out here.
STAR WARS: YODA
The start of my three-issue Yoda story drops on Wednesday, May 3. You can check out a preview below courtesy of aiptcomics.com:
PENCIL’S DOWN?
As I’ve been alluding to in this newsletter — and as everyone in Hollywood and even some outside of it have been endlessly discussing — there is the possibility of a Writers Guild strike next week.
The Writers Guild of America’s (WGA) Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA) with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) at midnight on Tuesday. Unless some kind of agreement is reached, the Guild will go out on strike at 12:01 AM on Tuesday morning.
I’m not sure there is anything I can offer here that has been expressed elsewhere and better, but for my money — literally — this negotiation comes down to basic fairness. Over the past several years, the television streaming companies have radically altered — some would say “broke” — the entertainment business. As a result, writers, directors, actors, and the so-called “below-the-line” crewmembers have all taken it on the chin.
While these companies brag to Wall Street about their record growth and their CEOs rake in sums of cash that would shame even Ebenezer Scrooge, front-end compensation and back-end profit participation and residuals have stagnated if not outright diminished.
So, you might ask, if it’s not just writers who are affected, why is it the writers who are threatening to strike?
There are two answers to that question. First, it just so happens that the WGA’s MBA is up for expiration first. The DGA’s contract expires a month later. And the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) will see their contract expire after that.
Also, there are issues that are specific only to writers. WGA members to a different job than the members of its sister guilds, so we obviously have problems that require solutions that are unique to writers. Most of these problems I recognize and most of the solutions I agree with.
My hope, of course, is that the WGA and AMPTP can make a deal that will avert a strike. In the past 48 hours alone, I sold the aforementioned spec and set up a limited series at one of the aforementioned streamers. I have a screenplay at a major studio with a lot of momentum behind it. I’m negotiating with a couple others on three different TV pilots. My point is: This is not a great time for me to be going on strike.
But having been through the last WGA strike (in 2007 and 2008), I’m here to tell you that… there’s never a good time for a strike. It’s the labor equivalent of going to war. And unless you’re insane, war is no fun for anybody.
But sometime’s it’s necessary.
Be good to each other.
Best,
Marc
Encino, California
4.28.23