Follow-up credits Error on Max Not fixed soon, WGA strikes fury – Deadline

MAX

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. Discovery promised to give writers and directors credit for their Max streaming service, but don’t expect the fix to happen any time soon.

“This could take weeks with all the data to be transferred, checked and finalized,” said a studio insider of the May 23 SNAFU streamer launch that sparked outrage and anger from striking writers and negotiating filmmakers this week. “It’s not as easy as pressing a button.”

Still, it’s unlikely creatives will be satisfied with WBD delays after the very raw nerve the errors hit.

“Warner Bros has lumped writers, directors and producers into a made-up, declining category they call Creators,” WGA West chief Meredith Stiehm said in a joint release Wednesday with DGA boss Lesli Linka Glatter about Max’s rollout. “This is a credit violation for starters. Worse yet, it’s disrespectful and insulting to the artists who make the movies and TV shows that make their companies billions.”

As it stands, Jesse Armstrong is still on the list of a coterie of non-alphabetic “Creators” for the end Succession. Regardless of the inclusion of executive producers Will Farrell and Adam McKay under the Succession The team of creators currently featured on Max, Armstrong is the sole creator of the Emmy-winning satire.

Despite the frustration (to put it politely) many writers, directors, producers and others feel lumped in as “Creators” in the Max credits pages, the promised process to “correct the credits” will actually take weeks Take in custody. best scenarios.

“From Roku to Apple and beyond, you have to do this platform by platform and that takes time,” a streamer exec told Deadline. “The number of platforms will be a determining factor in how long it will take in total,” he added, noting that the old credits that existed on HBO Max couldn’t just be transferred to Max.

Then got in touch today about how long it would take to fix the multitude of Max credits on shows like Robin Thede’s A Black Lady sketch show and classics like David Chase made The sopranos, a spokesperson for Warner Bros. Discovery Deadline referred to their May 23 statement. That slanted statement read: “We agree that the talent behind the content on Max deserves to have their work properly recognized. We will correct the credits, which have been changed due to an error in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max, and we apologize for this error.”

To be clear, in just one of literally thousands of instances of errors on the streamer, regardless of what’s on Max right now, Crazy men creator Matthew Weiner did not co-create The sopranos — but he was a writer on the critically acclaimed series and rose to executive producer.

While there is a proliferation of conspiracy theories about how something so stupid could have happened – including: whether it could have been orchestrated by WBD CEO David Zaslav in revenge for being repeatedly targeted by the high profile WGA – the truth seems to be much more. banal; a case of ill-considered efficiency turning into human error, I hear.

In the rush to transition HBO Max to Max this week, a unit within WBD’s sprawling IT department took matters into their own hands. With the plethora of dramas, comedies, specials, animations, movies and unscripted material from WB, HBO, Discovery and more in the Max inventory, it was decided to create a reductive collectible format so that everything was in its place for launch. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the engineering team’s efforts never made it to the company’s flagpole, where they may have been corrected. The internal consequence of that was that most top-level WBD executives weren’t even aware of the fumble until Max’s slightly shaky launch was live and criticism poured in online.

Still, that means bupkis for many, and two days after Max’s apology and promises to fix things, the desire to see proper credits on shows remains: