The company behind The Expendables films has been accused of not complying with union agreements with the Writers Guild.
While the strike last year from the Writers Guild of America brought Hollywood to a standstill, there is one production company that is remaining to be a complication with the union. That company is Avi Lerner’s Millennium Films. Lerner is an alum of the notorious Cannon Films studio, which famously went bankrupt under mismanagement. Millennium continued the tradition of genre films with lower budgeted action fares like the Expendables franchise, Olympus Has Fallen, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and Drive Angry.
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the Writers Guild has recently sent out a warning members not to work with Millennium Pictures since the studio is not a signatory to its 2023 union agreement contract, whose term is three years. The top executive officers of the union stated in a Wednesday message to members,
We are writing to alert you that WGA members are prohibited under Working Rule 8 from performing writing services for, or optioning or selling literary material to, Millennium Pictures, Inc. (Millennium), or any affiliate thereof.”
The statement continues, “The Guild has had to bring a significant number of claims against Millennium over the years for the company’s failure to pay writers initial compensation and residuals, as well as failure to pay writers within the timeframe established in the MBA.” As a result, “The Guild has determined that Millennium is not financially responsible and requires the posting of an adequate bond before it can become signatory. Millennium has, to date, refused to do so.”
The last entry in the Sylvester Stallone action ensemble franchise, Expend4bles, received an underwhelming response from audiences, but Dolph Lundgren somewhat teased that Sly may still work on a follow-up. When Lundgren was asked if he’d return for another round, he responded, “Yeah, if Sly’s in charge. I think he’s working on his version of another chapter with these guys. If he’s in charge, then yeah, I’m sure it would be fun to work on it.“ This comes after he noted the problems behind the scenes with the last film, “That project had issues from the beginning, and it usually starts with the script. It really didn’t have a good script. I’m not playing the lead, so it’s hard for me to weigh in on some of those issues, but I know Stallone wasn’t involved, like he usually is. He just played a character in it, and when he’s in charge, the quality is going to be pretty good, it doesn’t drop below a certain level. But he wasn’t involved, so I think the problem was with the script, and then the director was replaced, like, a month before shooting.”