" />http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-filmstrike24oct24,0,6662088.story?coll=la-home-center

"Just last week, guild members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if a new contract couldn't be worked out with the >studios and networks. All over town, executives, agents, producers and writers are nervously girding for what might be the >biggest labor confrontation in 20 years. Depending on how negotiations go, the strike could come as early as Nov. 1, >although the guild could always choose to continue negotiating under the existing contract. Nevertheless, almost everyone >in town is gripped by a sense of foreboding, as it remains unclear how the talks between the guild and the studios will pan >out. "Everybody is living in the impending doom," Goldsman said."

...

"Given what's at stake and the [time] we have left, our writers on every project are working under inhuman amounts of >pressure," said Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who is producing "G.I. Joe," Paramount Pictures' would-be tent-pole movie for >summer 2009, which as of last week hadn't even been officially greenlighted.

In September, the "G.I. Joe" team hired "Collateral" scribe Stuart Beattie to begin a total overhaul of the script. Beattie >turned in his first draft by the beginning of October and is now busily working on a second set of revisions, which are due >back to Paramount on Oct. 31.

...

"Just last week, 20th Century Fox issued an announcement that the studio was laying claim to May 1, 2009, as the release >date for its big-budget sci-fi spinoff "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" starring Hugh Jackman. This was just days after it issued >an urgent SOS to the major agencies looking for a quick rewrite person. Another 2009 movie recently looking for polishes >was "Four Christmases," the Vince Vaughn-Reese Witherspoon holiday yarn. The studios pay top "script doctors" $250,000 to >$300,000 per week to polish screenplays."

I guess this means you can kiss goodbye any hopes for depth, plot, and intrigue in the Wolverine and GI Joe movies. Though with Lorenzo "Bat nipples" Di Bonerventura on board, the man whose Hollywood wet dream was realized when the giant robot spider in Wild Wild West made the big screen, there wasn't much hope for the Joes to begin with. The last work stoppage brought such gems as Dukes of Hazzard, Herbie Fully Loaded, Aeon Flux and a couple dozen other horrible scripts that had been collecting dust on desks in development hell. So looks like 08/09 will be a repeat of the crapfest of summer 05, though there's probably an upside to all this i'm sure.

The big question is if those movies are crap will they do what the Batman & Robin, Spawn, or Judge Dredd movies did to their characters and we'll have to wait a decade to get another X-Men movie or worse turn people off from it altogether?