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Even though the labor agreement between the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers isn't set to expire until next October 31, the studios have already invited the WGA to join them in contract renewal talks, hoping to dispense with the formality of bending the union over the negotiating table, scattering a few pennies on top of a DVD, and buggering them until they accept the offering as their new home video residual rate. (This year, streaming and downloads will complicate matters, as the producers haven't figured out a way to scribble "Fuck you, you'll get nothing and like it" on an iPod without seeming crass and inflexible.) Thus far, the WGA has resisted their adversary's clumsy overtures, hoping to maintain some leverage by delaying their inevitable loin-plumbing until September, a posture which has the studios decrying the Guild as strike-happy maniacs bent on wiping out the entertainment industry once and for all. Colorful quotes from Variety follow:

Some execs attributed the WGA's move to simple gamesmanship, designed to show studios and networks that the scribes are serious about getting a bigger slice of the pie.

"It's like a batter stepping out of the box with the bases loaded, just to rattle the pitcher," one top agent said. [...]

"The guild seems determined to ratchet up the likelihood of a strike," [Law & Order producer Dick Wolf] told Daily Variety. "It's a Neolithic tactic, but it's a clear message that they want to have a work stoppage. I don't have to be the Delphic oracle to have seen this coming."

The studios, of course, are not without their own blunt weapons; they can threaten to stockpile scripts and rush various projects into production in anticipation of a potential strike, a move that would eventually plunge the entire industry into a de facto work stoppage during which all unionized workers slowly starve to death while two seasons' worth of Studio 60 episodes and the next three, shoddily realized Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, comprised entirely of a Johnny Depp lookalike being chased around a moldy rowboat by a single, undead buccaneer in drugstore-quality skeleton make-up, trickle through the distribution pipeline. We suggest that both sides get together immediately and burn down the city now, sparing us from having to contemplate such nightmarish scenarios for the next 11 months.