As the actor’s and writer’s strike continues on with no end in sight, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) has reportedly hired a major Washington, D.C.-based crisis management firm, the Levinson Group, to assist in its messaging.
According to both THR and The Wrap, the studios and streamers represented by the AMPTP have “grown concerned that they’ve come across in the media as antagonistic” whilst “company members and especially their CEOs have found themselves villainized”.
The Levinson Group will now reportedly work alongside the PR consultants already in place for the AMPTP. The hiring follows the apparent breakdown this week of recently renewed talks between the AMPTP and the WGA.
The writer’s guild last posted an update yesterday with a letter going over the events of the week. According to the WGA Negotiating Committee in a memo, a meeting this week turned into “a lecture [by the AMPTP] about how good their single and only counteroffer was.”
They add: “This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not twenty minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP [publicly] released its summary of their proposals.”
After what seemed like a hopeful change last week that some progress had been made with both sides ready to sit down and talk, it seems discussions between the writers and studios are once again dead for the moment.
