The grim mood that already has Hollywood in its grips thanks to the dual strikes has taken an even bleaker turn post-Labor Day, as the probability of the town getting back to work before 2024 decreases.

That’s the industry sentiment Variety’s resident labor experts are picking up with summer in the rearview and only 8-10 work weeks left in 2023. “There’s a real feeling that if there’s isn’t significant traction by the end of this month and early October, we’re looking at the worst-case scenario,” said Cynthia Littleton, Variety co-editor-in-chief, in the webinar Variety Intelligence Platform hosted Tuesday on LinkedIn Live, the latest in our continuing series of discussions on the industry’s labor strife. “It’s not a buoyant mood in Hollywood.”

The webinar, moderated by VIP+ media analyst Tyler Aquilina, touched on a wide range of issues, including the hangover from the CEO members of the AMPTP’s August attempt to resolve the standoff with the WGA that ended up going nowhere. 

That has left both sides in something of a staring contest where each entity is waiting for the other to blink, according to Variety reporter Gene Maddaus. “They’re just sitting in this stasis, saying, ‘We can stay united longer than you can stay united,’ ” he observed. 

Part of the difficulty of progressing the negotiations, Littleton believes, is that the AMPTP is hamstrung by many factors. With the exception of Disney CEO Bob Iger, few current CEOs have experience with Hollywood unions. Iger, for one, also has many distractions he is dealing with at his own company in the form of challenges that range from the recent face-off with Charter Communications to the pending direct-to-consumer shift of ESPN. 

In addition, many of the AMPTP members are unaccustomed to the pressures of dealing with the scrutiny of social media and the rigid formalities of the collective bargaining process, particularly the new generation of executives like Universal Pictures’ Donna Langley or Disney’s Dana Walden. 

And lastly, there’s the bleed-through of the larger cultural environment that seems to have also paralyzed the world of politics. “It’s just like the macroeconomic environment, where we can’t even seem to agree on a basic set of facts,” Littleton said. “It’s really hard on all sides of the issue.”