One Month Into Hollywood Shutdown, TV Producers Brace For Term-Deal Suspensions & Terminations

One Month Into Hollywood Shutdown, TV Producers Brace For Term-Deal Suspensions & Terminations

TV studios had been preparing for a work stoppage for months over the expiring WGA-AMPTP contract. In an ironic twist of fate, the stoppage came a little earlier, brought upon by a force nobody could’ve predicted.

A month into the mass Hollywood production shutdown over the coronavirus pandemic, anxiety among TV producers and staffers is running high. We’ve had the first major film and TV company, Disney, impose pay cuts and furloughs. Like was the case with layoffs in the aftermath of the Disney-Fox merger, the furloughs hit the combined film operations — mostly distribution, in light of movie theaters closures — but have not extended to the TV divisions, with no current plans to do so, I hear.