Warner Bros. TV suspends high-profile development deals

In a move that makes it seem like the studios are not planning on ending the strikes and getting back to work any time soon, Warner Bros. Television has decided to suspend its remaining development deals with high-profile producers and showrunners—including Greg Berlanti (The old CW’s Arrowverse), Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso), Mindy Kaling (Never Have I Ever), J.J. Abrams (Lovecraft Country), and more, with Chuck Lorre’s deal apparently having been suspended already. An overall deal like this basically means that the studio pays these writers/producers to come up with projects, and then the studio gets first dibs (or maybe only dibs) on whatever they pitch.

Suspending those deals means exactly what it sounds like: They’re on pause. The studio, in other words, isn’t going to pay for writers to come up with ideas when the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are on strike and nothing is being made anyway. But what it means in this specific context is that the studio would rather keep the strikes going and pay no writers at all than leave these deals with some of the most successful writers and producers in the history of the medium in place—and they’re doing it now, three months into the WGA strike.

That all seems to indicate that Warner Bros. TV, and therefore parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, doesn’t think the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are going to end any time soon. Variety says the studio paused most of its deals like this right away when the WGA strike began, but some remained in place before the actors strike started because some shows were still in production. But now the actors have been on strike for a while as well, so it looks like Warner Bros. TV is just cutting its losses and suspending everything at this point—which is to say that the strikes are apparently working and the studios have no choice but to do things like this. If nothing else, it means the strike isn’t going to end tomorrow, because, otherwise, why go to the trouble of contacting these writers and producers now?

Variety also notes that the studio would apparently be within its rights to kill deals like this outright at this point, citing the ongoing strike as an “act of god” that can’t be resolved (since it’s been more than 90 days, which is the cutoff for that kind of thing in this kind of deal). So it’s at least somewhat to the credit of the various AMPTP studios that they haven’t been doing a ton of that just yet. As it stands now, these deals will probably be unsuspended whenever the WGA strike ends, and any time lost during the pause will be re-added to the length of the deal.