Rushfield: Why Don't the Legacy Studios Break Off?

What keeps the AMPTP's unholy union bound together

A harbinger? A model of a lumbering ancient beast thrashing helpless in the tar at the LaBrea Tar Pits in L.A. (George Rose/Getty Images)

As the strike began, the working dream scenario for many WGA stalwarts was a divide-and-conquer outcome; that the studios break apart — particularly legacy studios from the streamers — and each make its own separate peace. The WGA would pick them off until a core of a couple streamers remained in an untenable position until their final surrender.  It was a scenario with some precedent — in the last strike a good handful of individual companies broke away and made their own deals. And the WGA also looked to the agency action where, again, the other side crumbled one at a time.

The scenario made so much sense that I myself predicted it was the likeliest outcome at one point, way back when, when we were all younger and naive. After all, the legacy studios and the streamers were entirely different businesses, with entirely different priorities. In normal times, not only are they not allies, they are mortal foes. 

So why should the legacy studios wreck their whole companies and industry just to stay aligned with these companies that have brought them nothing but woe since the Streaming Wars began?