As Packaging Comes To An End, Squabbles Over Grandfathered Projects Likely To Continue

deadline.com:

It has been a long goodbye for packaging since the WGA and the major agencies’ new franchise agreements, signed in 2020-21 after an epic fight, included a “phase-in of packaging fee prohibition” period that ends tonight.

But while for the WGA “it’s the end of new packages on guild-covered projects going forward,” per WGA West assistant executive director Ellen Stutzman, I hear that WME, CAA and UTA may not feel that way.

Different interpretations of the language in the agreement could trigger dozens of arbitration proceedings, with studios stuck in the middle of potential disputes.After a 22-month standoff, the WGA’s campaign targeting what the guild referred to as “conflicted agency practices” of packaging and affiliated production come to a successful end in February 2021 when the last holdout, WME, signed a franchise agreement stipulating that an “agent’s right to negotiate packaging fees shall terminate on June 30, 2022,” while limiting agencies’ ownership in production companies to 20%.In the weeks leading to tonight’s deadline, I hear WME has sent letters to studios where their clients have existing overall deals that allow packaging, notifying them that future projects developed under the deals would also be packaged per the clause in the overall pacts should the writers choose to do so.

A rep for WME declined comment.Because the franchise agreement states that “agent’s right to negotiate packaging fees” ends today, I hear agents also have been seeking to pre-negotiate with the studios’ business affairs and set packaging rates for the various types of TV series that they could use in the future.I hear some studios have reached out to the WGA — Deadline did too — and the guild’s position is that the packaging