Talent agencies produced their own content for two decades despite a sixty-year union ban

Evidence

In recent years, the talent agencies became bolder in flouting the rules against production. CAA operated Wiip, a television production company known for the HBO hit Mare of Easttown and the Apple TV+ series Dickinson, among many others. Endeavor operated both IMG Original Content, which had more than fifty series and specials on its roster, and Endeavor Content, which had financed, packaged, or sold more than one hundred films and TV shows since 2016, including Academy Award winners Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016), La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016), and Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016), as well as Emmy-winner Killing Eve (BBC, 2018–present). Known in industry jargon as “double-dipping,” the involvement of talent agencies in production was expressly banned by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) for nearly sixty years, but its legality was in limbo since an agreement between SAG and the talent agencies expired in 2002. This flagrant conflict of interest caused strife with the WGA, which began flagging the practice as early as March 2018, claiming that “agencies have little incentive to defend or improve quotes (writers’ previous pay) because their compensation is not tied to the well-being of their client.” Upon the WGA’s successful labor action started in 2019, discussed above, Endeavor agreed to the WGA’s terms and divested from scripted production (though it held on to non-scripted, documentary, and film consulting). In 2021, it sold a majority stake of IMG Original Content and Endeavor Content for $775 million to South Korean conglomerate CJ ENM, which renamed the company Fifth Season. CAA also divested from Wiip, which was acquired by JTBC Studios, another South Korean media company. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 261

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the industry term “double-dipping” — when a talent agency both represents talent and produces the content.
• QUESTION: This is a key example for the reader: can we trace Endeavor’s financialized structure (producing to capture its own clients’ fees) to aesthetic choices in Arrival or Mare of Easttown? The WGA quote suggests agency-produced shows undercut writers’ pay quotes — a potentially traceable formal/financial link.