This Week in Gossip #14

Coyote vs. Acme is dead, Jon Stewart is back, Beyoncé is country, and the Oscars finally did something right.

1. It’s Official: Coyote vs. Acme Will Be Deleted From Existence, Because Warner Bros. is Run By Idiots

Today in "F*ck David Zaslav" news, it was reported that Warner Bros. Discovery, after dangling the possibility of selling the shelved movie Coyote vs. Acme to another studio, now plan to just delete it entirely. They simply want to get rid of this completed project and use it as yet another tax write-off as they did with Batgirl. As a piece in TheWrap by Drew Taylor notes, "Warner Bros., which stood to make $35 – $40 million on the tax write-down, wanted something in the ballpark of $75 – $80 million from a buyer. And what’s more, they wouldn’t allow the interested studios to counter Warner Bros.’ offer. It was a “take it or leave it” situation, one that the other studios didn’t even know they were entering into, insiders told TheWrap."

As Taylor detailed, it’s not just that Warner Bros. wouldn’t make a deal with another studio: it’s that they clearly never had any intention of going to the negotiating table in good faith. They put out a number for sale, wouldn’t allow a counter-offer, then packed up their toys and went home. It’s evident that they never truly wanted to sell the film off, even though, by various accounts, there was a lot of enthusiasm for it. Test screenings were highly positive, as was industry buzz. A Looney Tunes movie with John Cena, written by an Oscar nominee, that’s being compared to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That should have been the easiest sell in the world, whether it was under the Warner Bros. umbrella or that of another company. If Zaslav and company can’t make that work, they’re actively bad at their jobs.

To rub salt into the wound, The Wrap also claimed that none of the Warner Bros. Discovery heads had even seen the finished film. They didn’t even care enough to look at what they were planning on deleting. And for what? $40 million is obviously not pocket change, but it seems so small in this context, especially since they already spent all that money making the damn movie. The short-term gains might please a few shareholders (although their stock prices have fallen since the merger) but how does anyone in the business ever trust WBD again? If you’re a filmmaker or actor, why would you sign onto a project with this company when there’s an increasingly solid chance that your work will never see the light of day? If even James Gunn, the guy trying to salvage the DC Universe for Warner Bros., can’t get a movie out, who can? If even a big IP movie based on one of the most iconic creations in this company’s back-catalogue is expendable, what is the exception to the rule?

It's been exhausting to watch the usual suspects, the needless contrarians and alt-right bros, pretend that they're huge supporters of Warner Bros. doing stuff like this. It's bootlicking without the decency to admit it. Defending this morally and culturally destructive practice with a shrug of "well, it's just business" is pure weasel behaviour. Frankly, this should be illegal, because it sure does look like a major corporation is creating stuff just to use it for tax write-offs. Where is regulation when you need it?

I cannot stress enough how much Hollywood is currently run by cultural vandals. It’s not just the film and TV industry, of course. Publishing is eager to swap out human employees with AI. Video game companies are run by accused sex offenders who drive their workers to mental breakdown through crunch. The music world has been decimated by the likes of Spotify and Ticketmaster. People who create art are constantly restricted by corporate interests that treat everyone like children and the end result is often unsatisfying for all except the already obscenely wealthy. Nobody benefits from a situation like Coyote vs. Acme being deleted, or HBO Max removing swaths of original programming from its platform, or IPs being hoarded like shiny trinkets in a dragon’s cave. These are all excuses to screw over workers, whether it’s by denying them royalties or removing their work from the equation altogether. The vast majority of people working in the entertainment industry already make far less money than they deserve, but at least, once upon a time, they could guarantee that at least someone would get to see the things they’d made. Now? This future is bleak.

2. Models Are Now Ready to Strike and Unionize

Following last year's Hot Strike Summer, many other areas of the entertainment world are seriously considering labour action. One such area, and one that's been in sore need of a reckoning, is the modelling industry. As reported by Variety last week, "a growing chorus of hybrid model-actors are drawing attention to the woeful working conditions that models face and are calling for meaningful change." The people who spoke with the publication cited sexual misconduct, racism, and exploitation as frequent occurrences in their field, and that all were backing "New York’s Fashion Workers Act, which would close a legal loophole that allows modeling agencies to act with impunity."

Questions over the exploitative nature of the fashion industry – purely on the modelling side, I’m not even counting the sweatshops – have been around for decades. I remember hearing stories about teenage girls being plucked from obscurity in Africa and Eastern Europe to be paid pennies and forced to starve as a kid. It feels like every major model has told at least one story of a photographer trying to force them to take their clothes off or a booking agent taking all their money. Gérald Marie, former head of Elite Model Management, has been accused many times of rape and sexual assault by models like Carré Otis (prosecutors closed the investigation into him last year due to the statute of limitations in France.)