In the reception room of the Relativity Building, Ronan shakes hands with a gray-haired, middle-aged white man.

"Hello, Mr. Anderson. The middle-aged white man smiled very enthusiastically: "It's a great pleasure to see you again." ”

Ronan said with a smile with the demeanor of a master, "Bill, welcome to Relativity Entertainment." ”

This middle-aged man is the president of the Writers Guild of the American West, named Bill Domingo, and is also a senior screenwriter in Hollywood, but he was active in the seventies and eighties of the last century, although there are many works, but there are few well-known, belonging to the category of large production and lack of high-quality products.

In the mid-nineties, Bill Domingo stopped writing scripts and turned to the Western Writers Guild to work in administration, becoming president of the Western Writers Guild Council in 2005.

The Writers Guild of America is a general organization consisting of two parts: the Western Writers Guild and the Eastern Writers Guild.

As the name suggests, its members are mainly divided by geographical location.

The Writers' Guild is a very large organization, with nearly 20,000 members, even if the entry conditions are high.

There is no doubt that Bill Domingo is the voice of this segment.

Bill Domingo exchanged a few words with Ronan and went straight to the point: "Mr. Anderson, Hollywood has not been doing well lately, the whole industry may be in turmoil, no one wants to see this situation, I am here on behalf of the Writers Guild this time......"

Ronan understood what he meant, and said, "Bill, you should talk to Del Potro about this, he is the chairman of the Producers Alliance, and he is in charge of specific matters. ”

Bill Domingo is well aware that if he wants to resolve this matter as soon as possible, he cannot avoid it: "I have talked to Del many times, the two sides have a big difference, continue to talk in the form of formal channels, and it may not be possible to reach an agreement for several months. ”

Ronan roughly speculated that the Producers' Union had privately approached several major unions to deal with Hollywood's union in a divisive and disintegrating way, and that the Writers Guild had responded in the same way, reaching out to the largest companies in the Producers Union.

Although the producer alliance is made up of more than 80 companies, it is not a problem to be able to convince the large and medium-sized companies among them.

Even if you convince some of the large and medium-sized companies, the situation can become very favorable to the writers' union.

That being said, it's no less difficult job to do.

Ronan looked calm and said, "It's useless for you to talk to me about this, I'll tell you the truth, Bill." It has long been agreed within the producers' alliance that negotiations with the union will be carried out by the alliance. ”

Bill Domingo smiled, but didn't have any intention of giving up, and said: "I have carefully counted that in the past three years, among all the companies in Hollywood, the company that has produced the most movies and series projects is your Relativity Entertainment. If I'm not mistaken, that's true now and in the next few years, right?"

There is no need to deny this kind of thing, and if you don't count the film library and past rights income, and just talk about the new movie projects every year, Relativity Entertainment is currently the largest and highest-grossing company in Hollywood.

Ronan said seemingly casually: "It is estimated that in a short period of time, there will be no company that surpasses Relativity Entertainment in the newly started projects." ”

"Relativity Entertainment has the most projects and employs the largest number of screenwriters. Bill Domingo is still doing his best: "If this incident drags on for too long, if it gets worse, Relativity Entertainment will suffer the most." ”

Ronan remained silent: "Bill, what do you mean......"

Bill Domingo said: "If Relativity Entertainment can reach an agreement with the Writers Guild, all writers under the union can cooperate with Relativity Entertainment normally without any impact on Relativity Entertainment. ”

Ronan couldn't help but laugh: "This will bring about a split in the Producers' Union. ”

"You are a loose alliance with each other bargaining power with the unions. Bill Domingo was telling the truth: "Trust that other companies will not consider your alliance on favorable terms." ”

Ronan nodded slightly: "You're right. ”

The Producers' Union is an alliance of interests, and the reason why the Union Union Alliance is being treated unanimously for the time being is because there are common interests in this regard.

When more favorable conditions arise, it does not matter at all to abandon the alliance and negotiate with the unions.

Bill Domingo added: "The union takes the cooperation with Relativity Entertainment very seriously, and there are ......"

Ronan raised his hand and prepared for Bill Domingo's words: "I understand what you mean, Relativity Entertainment doesn't want to see the contradictions between the Union and the union completely intensify and develop to the point of no return. ”

That sounds great, but Bill Domingo knows there could be a twist ahead.

Sure enough, Ronan's voice changed: "But the new conditions you put forward cannot be accepted by Relativity Entertainment in any way." ”

Bill Domingo said: "We can talk. ”

As long as the two sides officially start talks, there is no doubt that a signal will be released.

"Your conditions are too high. Ronan did not mean to refuse to talk, but if he wanted to negotiate, the conditions must be lowered: "The revenue share of new media and DVDs will be 15 percent, and the share of other parties will be increased to 3 percent, and the new channels will be compensated for the past. ”

Bill Domingo asked, "What about the conditions of relativistic entertainment?"

Ronan said directly: "I won't talk about the lowest and highest income of union members, the main thing is to share. In terms of traditional channels, the share of free TV, pay movies, cable TV, and the distributor's global revenue of 1% remains unchanged. DVDs can be added to the home entertainment segment, for example, the same as video tapes, and the producer earns 1.5 percent. In addition, each film pays the screenwriter a total of $10,000 for DVD scripts. ”

Bill Domingo's face remained unchanged, but his heart was cold, this low condition is unacceptable!

"Internet new media ......" Ronan sighed for a moment and said: "You can also talk about one percent of the publisher's income." ”

Bill Domingo fell into a brief silence.

Ronan's conditions, compared to those required by the writers' union, simply fell directly from the sky into the Mariana Trench.

In the past, it is good to say that the sharing project has basically not changed much, and the problem is not big, and the revenue of video tapes is now better than nothing, and the 1% distribution revenue share of TV channels can be discussed later, and it will increase a little.

But in terms of DVD and new media channels, the price cut is too hard.

The surrounding derivatives channel, the screenwriters' union has not thought about it, and it does not get the support of the labor association in this regard, but in terms of the copyright income that screenwriters can participate in, the highest income is DVD and Internet new media led by Netflix.

The Writers' Guild demands a 15 percent share of the total revenue.

In terms of new media and DVDs, Ronan cut to 0.5 percent and 1.5 percent respectively, not to mention, not to mention the total revenue share.

The former is the distributor's revenue share, and the latter is the producer's revenue share.

In general, copyright income can be divided into three parts, namely channels, distributors and producers.

"IMHO. Bill Domingo said: "Such conditions are unacceptable to the Writers Guild. ”

Ronan spread his hands: "Then there is no need for us to negotiate privately." ”

If there weren't enough of the stakes, why would Relativity Entertainment risk offending the producers' coalition and negotiate with the writers' union alone?

Bill Domingo is still trying his best: "Mr. Anderson, you were also a screenwriter in the first place, you understand the hardships of this industry, how many screenwriters put in the effort and don't get the corresponding reward?

To be precise, screenwriters are treated unfairly in Hollywood, and Ronan knows this, but he can't stand in the shoes of screenwriters, even though he used to be screenwriters: "Sorry, Bill, I'm a producer and I'm responsible for the thousands of employees at Relativity Entertainment. ”

The disagreement between the producers' alliance and the major trade unions has nothing to do with fairness and justice.

In the end, no agreement was reached between the two sides at this meeting, and the differences were not ordinarily large.

At the end of October, the Producers' Union's strategy of disintegration came into play, reaching a new agreement with the Directors Union and the Actors Union, and with the signing of a new framework agreement between the two unions and the Producers' Union, the Hollywood Union no longer exists, and most of the unions have died down, and only the Writers' Union is the only big union organization that is still fighting against the Producers' Union.

The directors' union and the actors' union, as well as their respective members, still pay lip service to the screenwriters' union, but this verbal support can play an almost zero role.

After some appropriate compromises from the Producers' Union, the two unions abandoned the Writers Guild again, as they had done two decades ago.

And the new agreement proposed by the screenwriters' union is unacceptable to the producers union.

To put it simply, the new agreement involves a range of issues such as hiring, firing, treating, compensating screenwriters, and how to sign screenwriters.

One of the main points of the negotiations between the two sides is the financial clause, which mainly includes two aspects: on the one hand, film and television producers must pay screenwriters more than a certain minimum wage, and on the other hand, they stipulate that the omni-channel income earned by TV programs or film rights must be increased by screenwriters.

In the most recent fiscal year, Hollywood's eight entertainment media companies, including Relativity Entertainment DreamWorks, dominated the film and television markets, with operating profits of nearly $56 billion, and more than 80 percent of the writers in the Writers Guild worked in these eight companies.

While the combined profits of these eight companies have doubled over the past decade and continue to grow, the Writers Guild believes that the entertainment boom is driven by the content created by union members, which has fueled the global growth of entertainment media companies and the rapid rise of online video distribution, and that the companies that control the content have profited from it many times, and that screenwriters deserve a piece of this unprecedented boom.