Warner Bros. Discovery has corrected changes it made to director and writer credits in its rollout of Max after receiving harsh blowback from the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild. In a statement, Max said: “We agree that the talent behind the content on Max deserve their work to be properly recognized. We will correct the credits, which were altered due to an oversight in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max and we apologize for this mistake.”
The correction comes after the DGA and the WGA issued angry statements about the change to longstanding individual credits of directors and writers in its movie library, which didn’t list director and writer credits specifically, but instead lumps them together as “creators.”
Prior to Max’s reversal, the DGA, which is currently in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for a contract, called the company’s unilateral move “a grave insult,” saying that will take “the strongest possible actions” to reverse it. The WGA, which has been on strike now for three weeks, called the change “disrespectful and insulting.”
“For almost 90 years, the Directors Guild has fought fiercely to protect the credit and recognition deserved by Directors for the work they create,” said DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter. “Warner Bros. Discovery’s unilateral move, without notice or consultation, to collapse directors, writers, producers and others into a generic category of ‘creators’ in their new Max rollout while we are in negotiations with them is a grave insult to our members and our union. This devaluation of the individual contributions of artists is a disturbing trend and the DGA will not stand for it. We intend on taking the strongest possible actions, in solidarity with the WGA, to ensure every artist receives the individual credit they deserve.”
And WGA West President Meredith Stiehm had said that “Warner Bros. has lumped writers, directors and producers into an invented, diminishing category they call Creators. This is a credits violation for starters. But worse, it is disrespectful and insulting to the artists that make the films and TV shows that and make their corporation billions. This attempt to diminish writers’ contributions and importance echoes the message we heard in our negotiations with AMPTP— that writers are marginal, inessential, and should simply accept being paid less and less, while our employers’ profits go higher and higher. This tone-deaf disregard for writers’ importance is what brought us to where we are today — Day 22 of our strike.”