Now, under normal circumstances, following the events today would result in one of my usual screeds calling the Screen Actors Guild a bunch of overpaid out-of-touch morons that apparently haven’t picked up a newspaper lately.

But it’s the surprise twist that makes it downright worthy of The Sixth Sense. And what a twist!…it is.

Okay, so when last we left this growing saga in the making, the Screen Actors Guild was still ranting and screaming and trying its best to protect its ridiculous pay packages despite the fact that the writers and directors and the OTHER actors agency were all on board with similar contracts.  Then SAG decided it was going to show a little largesse and call for a federal mediator.

This lasted something like two days, with both sides repeating themselves more than doing any actual negotiation, and SAG figured it was time for a strike.

Now, by itself, this would mean little except be just SPECTACULARLY funny–it’s hard to believe that, in some of the worst economic conditions EVER, even celebrities are dumb enough to complain about pay packages.  But then, these are the same people who bitch relentlessly about people taking their pictures and have the sheer gall to preach to us about our “carbon footprint” before getting into a private jet.

But where this turns into some serious problem for the AMPTP–the producers, essentially–is that they’re about to get sued wide open by the WRITERS, who are claiming BREACH OF CONTRACT!!  They spent like three months, give or take, on strike to get this contract.  The producers can’t seriously have thought they wouldn’t be watching it like a HAWK!  And sure enough, they were; the writers claim that the producers aren’t paying residuals for work that’s reused on the Internet, one of the major sticking points in the contract they’d fought so hard over.

So now, it’s a good chance that the AMPTP is going to have to deal with not only a misbegotten SAG strike, but also a lawsuit from the WGA at the same time.  Bad times ahead for producers, sure enough.

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