The unions for film and television scribes say the top four agencies are violating the law.
LOS ANGELES — The labor fight between Hollywood’s writers and their onetime allies escalated on Wednesday, when the Writers Guild of America filed a lawsuit against the four major talent agencies.
Late last week, the East and West branches of the W. G. A. instructed their members to part ways with any agency that has not signed a code of conduct meant to replace the franchise agreement that had governed the relationship between writers and agents since 1976.
None of the big four — William Morris Endeavor, Creative Artists Agency, United Talent Agency and ICM Partners — agreed to the new code.
After negotiations between the two sides broke down on Friday, the unions provided their members with form letters that would make it easy for them to sever ties with their agents.
In recent days, according to the W. G. A., “thousands” of the 8,800 active members have signed the letters. The unions’ leaders said they planned to forward those letters to the agencies “soon,” said David Goodman, the president of W. G. A. West.
[Here are the basic facts of the dispute that has shaken up Hollywood.]
The writers have accused the agencies of putting their own interests ahead of those of the writers, arguing that they are not fulfilling their legally bound fiduciary obligations to their clients.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, targets one of the writers’ two complaints: the agencies’ longstanding practice of packaging clients from their rosters — say, a writer with a director and an actor — in exchange for a sum of money paid to them by the studios.
