A report from Reuters in Los Angeles has calculated that the WGA Strike that crippled the city for months this past winter put the state of California into a recession.

According to the Milken Institute, an economic think tank, the strike cost the city $2.1 billion and 37,000 jobs. This gives SAG and AMPTP something to consider as the June 30 contract expiration date approaches and no deal has been made. A spokesperson for the think tank stated that a potential SAG strike would continue to cripple the economy and slow its recovery. 

Just when you thought it was safe to be a member of the WGA again... Variety announces that the Guild, which will be cursed by a crippled Los Angeles for many years after last year's 100-day strike, is back on the defensive against AMPTP.

The studios have filed an unfair labor practices charge against the guild because it released the names of the 28 writers who filed for financial core during the strike. The AMPTP claims that this release from WGA presidents Patric Verrone and Michael Winship violated federal law. 

According to Variety, the WGA has responded to the charges with a claim that they are "baseless and represent an intrusion by the studios into an internal union matter." That sounds remarkably similar to "Mind your own beeswax; we've got a beef to settle with these strikebreakers!" 

Writers are within their legal right to go financial core, but AMPTP claims that the letter released by the WGA presidents encourages the guild's members to "shun" the financial core writers. Verrone and Winship wrote, "This handful of members who went financial core... must be held at arm's length by the rest of us and judged accountable for what they are -- strikebreakers whose actions placed everything for which we fought so hard at risk." 

Financial core writers are entitled to all the benefits of the WGA contract, insurance, and pension plans, but they cannot vote. This means that fi-core WGA members are eligible to work on WGA-supported projects (which, by the way, is the reason George Clooney decided to go financial core instead of breaking from the guild altogether over the "Leatherheads" credit disagreement). 

Though the letter has a bitter and accusatory "string-'em-up" tone in regards to financial core writers, the WGA is citing this requirement by federal labor law as the main reason why the AMPTP's charges are wrong. The studios, employers of the writers, felt that it was their responsibility to protect potential employees who had elected to go financial core. 

The AMPTP claimed that the WGA's public announcement of these 28 writers was wrong, but WGA says that going financial core is a "public act that carries impact on other WGA members." 

Investigation continues.... 

Nikki Finke posted the open letter from the AMPTP regarding their upcoming negotiations with SAG. 

"Our upcoming negotiations -- starting with SAG on April 15th and AFTRA on April 28th -- will be guided by the same principles that helped us reach groundbreaking agreements with the DGA and the WGA:

First, we are committed to creating a genuine economic partnership with the talented men and women who help us create entertainment. That means that we should all share fairly in the revenues we generate -- including new revenue from the emerging areas of new media.

Second, our new economic partnership must give all of us the flexibility we need to adapt to rapidly changing markets and technologies. Too many industries have failed to respond quickly enough to these changes, and we are determined to position our businesses -- and the employees and shareholders who rely on them -- to succeed and grow in this challenging environment.

Third, actors, directors, writers, and the people who work behind-the-scenes on entertainment products are all vitally important to our mutual business endeavors. We remain committed to ensuring that the rewards of our success are distributed fairly among all of our industry's talent, so that we all have appropriate and meaningful stakes in the outcome of our work. 

Fourth, we will continue to work as hard as we can -- and to make the reasonable compromises that are necessary -- to avoid any additional, needless work stoppages. Fortunately, the three labor agreements already reached -- with the DGA, the WGA, an the AFTRA Network Code -- provide the new framework for our industry's economic future. We hope that our negotiations with SAG and AFTRA will bolster this new economic framework, enabling all of us to share equitably in the success of the new media and to respond with creativity and swiftness to make changes. If our industry relies on this new framework, we can all avoid more harmful and unnecessary strikes.'

So how does this sound to you? A few comments:

"Same principles that helped us reach groundbreaking agreements with the DGA and the WGA" ? Uh-oh, could we be in for another strike?

"We should all share fairly in the revenues we generate" ? Either they really did listen to the demands from the WGA, or this is another bullshit statement and attempt to make the AMPTP seem like less of a bad guy in the future.

"New economic partnership" ? This is the same language they used with the WGA, and it didn't go over so well.

When the Writers Guild of America went on strike in November, production on all television shows came to a screeching halt. Because of the nature of  production schedules, viewers were able to cope with the impending future of darkened screens by saying goodbye slowly as networks rolled out all of the remaining content they had stockpiled. It wasn't really until the holiday season that viewers began to feel the impact of the strike. As difficult as it has been to find other things to do than plant oneself in front of the television for hours at a time, such as *gasp* talk to other humans or read a book, the strike may have been just the kick in the pants television needed.

Though established shows were merely put on hiatus, the future for the season's new shows was unclear. Without a locked-in audience, studios were reluctant to renew new shows like ABC's Pushing Daisies, NBC's Chuck and Life, and other newbies. The good news is that, since the end of the strike, these along with Dirty Sexy Money and Private Practice have been renewed for the fall. 

The downside for the studios is that the momentum of these new shows was lost with the strike and they will now have to spend much more in building the audience back up. Likewise, the strike put crew members out of work. With the shows not starting back until September, crew members have had to find other jobs and now won't return to the postponed productions. 

What to do, what to do? Variety informs us that studio heads are now thinking of relaunching the shows as new entities during the pilot season. Last fall saw horrible ratings, so execs might be willing to go for a do-over. 

The benefit for us, the viewers, is that the strike gave the writers and execs a chance to rethink the direction and story arc for all shows. I don't know about you guys, but the Meredith-Derek back-and-forthyness was quickly growing stale, the fight between House's potential staff got just plain annoying, and, Heroes, good God, Heroes. And that's really all I was watching at the time of the strike. TV was just that bad.

The Variety article talks mostly about the ABC show Pushing Daisies, which was suffering from longer post-production schedules than previously anticipated and overblown budgets. Heroes and 24 are also taking advantage of the chance to take some time off in order to rework complicated plots (and because it's nearly impossible to produce enough episodes to bring these shows back in time).

All I can say is, with all this time off, these shows better hit the ground running. 

Isn't it great when you set out to do something and discover that someone else has already done it for you? In my investigation of return dates and plans for all of those mediocre TV shows we've been longing for, I found that Entertainment Weekly published a feature that lists, by series, the return date and plans for each show. 

Check it out here.

Pens at the ready! It was announced Tuesday that the WGA voted to end the three-month-long strike that has crippled Hollywood. 

According to E! Online, 92.5 percent of the Guild voted on Tuesday, with an overwhelming 3,492 saying yea and a mere 283 voting nay. The strike may be over, but the Guild members have not officially approved the new contract. Another vote will be taken as contract ratification ballots are mailed out this week. Guild members will then have until February 25 (the day after the Oscars ceremony) to vote. 

The bottom line, however, is that the writers are back at work. WGA president Patric Verrone announced Tuesday, 

"The strike is over. Our membership has voted, and writers can go back to work. This was not a strike we wanted, but one we had to conduct in order to win jurisdiction and establish appropriate residuals for writing in new media and on the Internet. Those advances now give us a foothold in the digital age. Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as TV migrates to the Internet and platforms for new media are developed."

Many writers returned to work Wednesday, but not all had jobs to return to. Sixty series were shut down during the strike, but not all of these will resume production. Pilots from this season that had not yet established themselves will most likely be axed. 

In addition, according to the New York Times, about 70 development deals have been scrapped and won't be picked up any time soon. This means that writers in these deals were given healthy stipends to come up with shows, but those shows may never see the light of day.

The pilot season for this coming fall has been cut back substantially. A slim pilot season means hungry writers. Established writers will be looking for work now that these development deals are gone, and with the push towards more reality shows than scripted productions, the industry could get ugly fast.

The WGA considers the new contract a triumph, despite the cost. A New York Times article stated that the AMPTP estimates that the strike cost writers almost $300 million and had cost other below-the-line workers and members of other film unions almost $500 million. 

With the new contract, Guild members will receive compensation for streaming Internet programming and the reuse of TV shows and movies to be streamed online. A summary of the new contract can be found here.

Though the contract ultimately establishes the "When they (the producers) make money, we (the writers) make money" precedent, the effects may not be seen for some time. In the long run, however, this contract provides the Guild with a starting point for future negotiations when perhaps more platforms for new media are available. 

Stay tuned for news on when your favorite shows will be back on the air.

If not for the countless photos of the daily picket lines and rallies held in the streets of Hollywood over the past three months, I would suppose that the city must resemble one of the dusty ghost towns from classic westerns. I have mental images of tumbleweeds rolling through the streets and pages of scripts wafting around the city. This is all imaginative conjecture, of course, but I feel it safe to presume that today, the city is gearing up like a steam engine getting ready to pull out of the station.

With a deal struck between the WGA and the media moguls, many TV showrunners are going back to work today. The deal is still pending a vote by the Guild members, but it is nearly a sure thing that all of Hollywood will be back to work by Wednesday.

Looking back at the past three months, I wonder if the strike was worth it. With the growing popularity of watching television shows online, there's no doubt that the new deal is a winner. It may not give the writers much, but it's better than nothing and a good place to start. In three years, who knows how much money streaming video will be generating for the industry (my guess is that it will include lots and lots of zeroes). With this precedent in place, it will be easier for the writers to negotiate for more in the future. 

Ah, the bright shiny future. But what about now? Writers have been out of work for three months, and many have been force-majeured. With the new deal in place, a TV writer will earn up to just under $2,000 per year per streamed episode. Over the past three months, however, many TV showrunners have lost hundreds of thousands by not being in production. While a show typically runs for 22 episodes a season, the 2007-08 season was cut down to only 12 to 15 episodes.

As for film writers, the strike disrupted option, rewrite and polish deals that may or may not be reclaimed. They also will not benefit from web streaming residuals as much as the TV writers will since television shows are streamed more often than films.

So what will the industry look like once writers get back to work? Surely changes have and will continue to be made in light of the events of the past three months. For one, the studios will probably try to avoid racking up so much overhead for television series by hiring writers on a more episode-by-episode basis instead of paying them a seasonal salary. 

In addition, it will be interesting to see what the industry learns from the shorter season and a no-frills pilot season. Perhaps in the future, Hollywood will take a lesson from networks like the BBC and focus on 9 or 10 really good episodes of a drama or sitcom instead of 22 mediocre ones. Likewise, the slim pilot season will hopefully take an attitude of quality over quantity. Think of it as a trained marksman concentrating on his target rather than an unskilled man with a machine gun. 

One thing the industry has learned is that no one watches awards shows if they can't see what the stars are wearing. I'm sure the producers are over the moon regarding the possibility of saving the Oscars from the fate of the Golden Globes.

Speaking of the stars, a settlement between the writers and producers lowers the chances of the Screen Actors Guild going on strike when their contract expires in June. It is unlikely that the Guild would go on strike when both the WGA and DGA have already settled. The studios are prepared, though. Film production has been hurried over the past several months in an attempt to get projects in the can before June. Likewise, fearing the possibility of the WGA and SAG striking at the same time, studios have stocked up on material. 

Hopefully the next few days will see the acceptance and ratification of the new deal. Though I don't know every minute detail of the contract, it seems as though the writers can count this as a win, especially if it saves the industry from a SAG strike. Hopefully, the next few days will see the acceptance and ratification of the contract. It will also be interesting to watch the industry scramble to regain the momentum of production that was stopped short in early November. Who knows, maybe they'll start answering questions on Lost!

Couch potatoes rejoice! Hollywood may be back to work by Wednesday. 

Meetings to present the WGA members with the details of the new contract were held yesterday in both New York City and Los Angeles. Variety and DHD are both proclaiming the meetings to be a huge success. The Guild members apparently support the new deal and are looking forward to the end of the strike. 

Following the meetings, the WGA Negotiating Committee met Sunday morning and reached an agreement to recommend the deal and call off the strike. 

According to DHD, union leaders pronounced the new contract "a huge victory." Though the deals for animation and reality programming were dropped, WGA leaders realized that this was a necessary move in order to get Hollywood back to work as soon as possible.

WGA President Patric Verrone stated that "The legacy of the '88 strike was the ability of the companies to develop content without writers and creators. The legacy of this strike will be the ability of writers to develop content without the companies." While the negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP were stalled over the holidays, the Guild made handfuls of interim deals with individual companies such as The Weinstein Company, Lionsgate, and United Artists. Verrone claims that the Guild will continue to make individual deals beyond the 7 media conglomerates. 

As it stands, the Guild members will have 48 hours to call off the strike and 10 days to accept the new contract. While this may not seem like a set-up that would please the producers, the Guild will allow TV showrunners to go back to work on Monday, before the vote. Originally, the plan was for the leaders to call off the strike, but Verrone announced the vote so that the outcome would be in the hands of the members. 

What this all means for the average prime time fan is that the last third (or the Back 9) of the television season can get underway this week. The pilot season this fall will probably be shorter with fewer scripted series ordered than any season in the past. Movies that had halted productions can now get back up and running. In addition, many of the deals that were force-majeured can be reinstated. This, however, only applies to deals and contracts for series set to resume production. 

Looking ahead to the schedule for this week, members will decide by Tuesday whether or not to accept the new contract. If the vote supports the adoption of the deal, members will have ten days to accept it. Television staff will go back to work Monday, with the rest of Hollywood going back to the office Wednesday.

Stay tuned for updates on the WGA strike.

WIth meetings scheduled in both New York and California today, the WGA has the nation on the edge of its seat. Will we see the end of the strike that has crippled Hollywood and lost thousands of people their jobs? 

On Friday, February 8, the WGA leadership met with strike captains to discuss the deal point by point. This took place before the deal language had been drafted, which is why the membership was not included. 

Most of the WGA has expressed a favorable attitude towards the deal, despite the fact that the terms still include a 17-day promotional period for streaming TV shows. This was a major sticking point during negotiations. The AMPTP initially requested a promotional window of over 40 days, during which they would not be required to share any percentage of the profits. Though this has apparently been whittled down to 17 days, the period is still too broad to ensure that the writers get their fair share. For example, when a show is posted online, how long do you wait to watch it? A day? A week? Surely not more than two weeks after it was aired. 

After this meeting, the WGA negotiators returned to the drafting table to continue working on the deal language. As of Friday evening, the deal language had yet to be posted anywhere or emailed to the WGA membership. This is because the Terms of Agreement was not finished. According to United Hollywood, the day was a series of battles with the AMPTP lawyers who continued to backslide on the terms in an attempt to make the deal more and more favorable towards the producers. Enough already! The AMPTP already managed to hold everything up by not delivering their notes to the WGA negotiating committee until late Friday afternoon, despite the fact that they were delivered on Tuesday. 

Without any legal language, there could be no meetings on Saturday, which would throw off the entire timetable. However, early Saturday morning, the drafted deal summary along with a letter from the presidents of both WGA-West and WGA-East was emailed to the Guild membership. This meant that the members had less than 12 hours to review the terms before their respective meetings. 

Here is an excerpt of the letter, posted on Deadline Hollywood Daily:

"Over these three difficult months, we shut down production of nearly all scripted content in TV and film and had a serious impact on the business of our employers in ways they did not expect and were hard pressed to deflect. Nevertheless, an ongoing struggle against seven, multinational media conglomerates, no matter how successful, is exhausting, taking an enormous personal toll on our members and countless others. As such, we believe that continuing to strike now will not bring sufficient gains to outweigh the potential risks and that the time has come to accept this contract and settle the strike.

Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success. We activated, engaged, and involved the membership of our Guilds with a solidarity that has never before occurred. We developed a captains system and a communications structure that used the Internet to build bonds within our membership and beyond. We earned the backing of other unions and their members worldwide, the respect of elected leaders and politicians throughout the nation, and the overwhelming support of fans and the general public. Our thanks to all of them, and to the staffs at both Guilds who have worked so long and patiently to help us all.

There is much yet to be done and we intend to use all the techniques and relationships we've developed in this strike to make it happen. We must support our brothers and sisters in SAG who, as their contract expires in less than five months, will be facing many of the same challenges we have just endured. We must further pursue new relationships we have established in Washington and in state and local governments so that we can maintain leverage against the consolidated multinational conglomerates with whom we bargain. We must be vigilant in monitoring the deals that are made in new media so that in the years ahead we can enforce and expand our contract. We must fight to get decent working conditions and benefits for writers of reality TV, animation, and any other genre in which writers do not have a WGA contract."

The details of the agreement can be found here.

One of the main goals of the meetings was for the WGA leadership to get a feel for how the membership felt about the deal. The AMPTP has made it clear that they would prefer for the leadership to call the strike off before taking a formal vote so that everyone can go back to work ASAP and the Academy Awards can go on as planned. According to DHD, the leadership was unsure Saturday morning whether or not to lift the strike without a member vote. 

Another interesting point to arise at the meetings is that of the Favored Nations Cause. This clause, which currently is not part of the deal, would make it so that when the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) negotiates their contract with the AMPTP, the WGA would benefit if a better deal is made. Currently, the only favored nations clause that the WGA has with the SAG is in the area of New Media. This means that if SAG negotiates a better pension deal or a better DVD deal, the WGA would not benefit. 

Overall, the deal was given the thumbs up from WGA membership. Twelve hours is an awfully short time to review a contract, though, so it is still unclear whether or not the membership will be given more time for review and a possible formal vote before the strike is lifted. 

I know it's tempting to settle back into the imprint you left in your sofa during the fall pilot season, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Though many news outlets are currently celebrating the end of the WGA strike, it's not quite over yet. Here's a brief outline of what will be happening over the course of this coming week.

According to Deadline Hollywood Daily, the WGA leadership is currently in the process of drafting the proposed deal from earlier this week (see my summary here) into legal terms. This will then be sent to WGA members. On Saturday, WGA West and East will have meetings on their respective coasts to meet with leaders. At these meetings, the WGA board will survey the crowd to get a feel for the deal's reception. On Sunday, the WGA negotiating committee will meet with the board to see if the Guild supports the deal. If the board votes yes, the strike will be called off immediately. Technically, since the board called the strike back in November, they can call it off whenever they please. The AMPTP is pushing for the board to call off the strike without a formal vote so that the Academy Awards (scheduled for February 24) can take place.

So what's the catch here? Will we be able to enjoy at least a few episodes of our favorite series before the summer break? The above is a tentative plan that hinges on the readiness of the legal language. If this is not drafted by Saturday, the entire timetable changes and the Academy Awards are back in limbo. Stay tuned for updates on the WGA strike.

Word on the 'net is that the end of the writers strike is in sight! Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily has reported that Patric Veronne, Dave Young and John Bowman (the lead WGA negotiators in Friday's talks) recommended the deal decided upon on Friday to the Guild members to the negotiating committee today. 

So far, no one in the Guild has been asked to vote, nor can they be until the deal is actually drafted. This is where the danger lies. If, when the process of putting the deal in legal terms begins, someone tries something sneaky with the language, all hell could break loose. 

According to a letter issued to Guild members by WGA Negotiating Committee Chair John Bowman, there are still "significant points" that need hammering out. Informal meetings with the Guild boards will take place this week, and no action will be taken until afterwards. 

As I said in my previous entry, if the strike is called off within the next few weeks, the rest of the season for television's scripted shows may be salvaged. In addition, the Oscars could go on as originally planned, the pilot season could be saved, and feature films currently in limbo could return to production. 

Stay tuned for updates on the WGA strike this week.

Can it be true? Progress made in the WGA-AMPTP negotiations? 

The Guild and the studios have been in informal negotiations since January 22, but have done so under a news blackout. According to Variety, insiders have claimed that enough progress is being made to increase the probability of the Guild delivering a proposal to its members in a matter of days. If this is the case, both sides would effectively bypass a return to formal negotiations. 

The studios want to use the DGA contract as a template for sealing the deal with the WGA, but the writers are stuck on the terms settled on by the DGA for Internet streaming of television shows and movies. 

When these informal talks began, the WGA dropped their proposal to unionize writers for animation and reality shows in an effort to extend an olive branch and move talks forward. In addition, the Guild will not picket the Grammy Awards and will instead allow the ceremony to take place with union support. Whether or not the Academy Awards will take place is still up in the air. What concessions, if any, the studios have made has not been released.

Clearly both sides are feeling pressured by unrest among WGA members, plummeting TV ratings, and the potential for the Oscars to turn into a boring press conference. Many showrunners have gone public with their restlessness and desire to return to work, believing the DGA deal is the best they're going to get. So far, ratings haven't been a big enough issue to threaten the studios. Reality- and rerun-heavy networks have yet to take a big toll on ratings. However, February is sweeps season, and the lack of new episodes has the potential to crush major networks. 

Oscar producers and organizers have announced a plan B for the broadcast if the writers are still on strike come the 24th. This ceremony would be a presentation of film clips, history, and the like instead of the usual star-studded gala event. The Screen Actors Guild has said that its members will not attend the ceremony if the writers are still on strike, which would result in an empty theater and a boring show. 

If a settlement is indeed reached within the week, the shortened '07-'08 television season could be salvaged with six or seven new episodes of popular shows such as Grey's Anatomy, Law & Order, and House, beginning in late March. In addition, an agreement now would allow the '08-'09 pilot season to go ahead as previously planned. 

Above all, it is important to remember that nothing is officail until it's on paper. And as of February 3, nothing is on paper. So far, any progress made has merely resulted in points on a memo. As United Hollywood, one of the main strike blogs, notes, "it's the drafting language that comes from hammering out those points that makes them legally binding. And our sources say that draft language doesn't yet exist." 

The Los Angeles Times reported that the Guild's leading negotiators will meet with the union's negotiating committee and board of directors on February 4th. Hopefully, the aforementioned contract language will be decided upon by the end of the week. However, the union's members will still need several days to ratify the agreement. If the union's leaders endorse the deal, the strike will likely be called off. 

The three-month-long strike has shut down productions on all scripted television shows, crushed awards shows, cost the industry over $500 million, led to the firing of thousands of below-the-line employees on various productions, and has caused the delay or cancellation of a number of studio film projects. 

Even if the WGA does reach an agreement with the AMPTP, there will not yet be peace in Hollywood. The Screen Actors Guild, whose contract expires on June 30, has made public their disapproval of the DGA contract, saying it's not a good template for the actors. 

Stay tuned for more updates on the strike and tentative agreement.

When the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) walked out on negotiations with the Writer's Guild of America (WGA) on December 7, 2007, the producers turned their sights on the Director's Guild of America (DGA), whose contract is scheduled to expire in June of 2008. 

Last week, the DGA and the AMPTP announced that they reached a preliminary agreement. 

On January 17, DGA President Michael Apted issued a press release on the Guild's website (www.dga.org), in response to the new contract. He commented on the fact that this negotiation period was more important than "simply wresting the best possible deal from an employer." The goals of this contract were to protect the interests of Guild members while also laying the foundations for contracts in the future. 

The DGA hoped through negotiations to arrive at a contract that both gave the Guild jurisdiction over new media productions (including derivatives of existing programs and original content) and that the Guild members receive fair compensation for online content. This includes both shows and movies made for the Internet and content previously aired on television or in the theater. 

According to the press release, the highlights of the contract include:

1) An increase in both wages and residual bases for each year of the contract (contracts last 3 years).

2) That DGA jurisdiction is established over programs produced for distribution on the Internet,

3) That a new residuals formula for paid Internet downloads be established to double the rate currently paid by employers, and

4) That residual rates be established for ad-supported streaming and use of clips on the Internet.

It must be noted that the agreement also includes a sunset provision that allows both sides to revisit the issues negotiated this time around when the agreement expires. This means that in three years, when this contract is up, both sides can return to the table concerning new media issues in light of what happens between now and then. The sunset provision is sort of a strange clause, since there are negotiations every three years regardless of the inclusion of such a provision. 

On January 27, The DGA's National Board of Directors voted unanimously to recommend ratification of the DGA and AMPTP contract. This means that ballots will be sent out to all 13,500 DGA members.

More details later on the ratification of the deal and what it means for the WGA. 

Earlier this month, I posted an extensive article detailing the WGA strike on Athens Exchange. At that point, the last news made public was that the AMPTP had walked out of negotiations and were instead looking to establish an agreement with the DGA.

On January 22, the WGA announced that they would begin informal negotiations with the AMPTP in order to determine whether or not there is a basis for both groups to return to negotiations. They are currently under a news blackout and have thus released no details concerning these talks.

In other news from the WGA, the Guild has signed interim agreements with Lionsgate studios, Marvel Studios, and RKO Productions, Inc. The agreements follow those made with The Weinstein Company, United Artists, Worldwide Pants, Spyglass Entertainment, MRC, Jackson Bites, Mandate Films, and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. 

Thank God. I was worried Lionsgate's Saw V was going to get scrapped. Lucky day. On the bright side, all of my fellow Milfweed junkies can rejoice, for Lionsgate is responsible for the fourth season of Showtime's Weeds. 

As for Marvel Studios, the summer slate includes Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow, and The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Nortom, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, and William Hurt.