The Writers Guild of America West has released an advisory to members ordering them to not work on “Wall of White,” a true-story disaster film project from producers Randall Emmett and Martin Scorsese, due to Emmett’s inclusion on the union’s strike/unfair list.
“Emmett has a long history of refusing to honor obligations to writers and the Guild has filed numerous arbitration claims against companies owned by Emmett over the last decade,” the guild said in the advisory.
“Wall of White” is set to be adapted from a 2010 book of the same name by Jennifer Woodlief and the 2021 Netflix documentary “Buried,” both of which recount a deadly avalanche at Lake Tahoe in 1982 that killed seven people. A rescue team was able to rescue an eighth person who was buried in the snow for five days.
Emmett was first added to the strike list in 2020 after he and his longtime business partner, George Furla, failed to pay writers for work on “Pump,” an abandoned TV project that was set to star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Their studio, Emmett/Furla Oasis films, had shut down after years of breach of contract lawsuits from financiers and production partners and millions of dollars in debt.
The WGA won a judgment against Emmett/Furla Oasis for $541,464, a sum that the guild says now exceeds $700,000 with interest. In 2022, Emmett established a new production company, Convergence Entertainment Group, which is producing “Wall of White.”
TheWrap has reached out to reps for Emmett and Scorsese for comment. In a statement sent to The Los Angeles Times, which first reported the WGA advisory, Emmett said he would resolve any issues with the WGA.
“We are fully financing this movie, and we have every intention to settle this dispute in the coming weeks,” Emmett said. “Our representatives will be reaching out to the Writers Guild so we can put this matter from six years ago behind us.”
Emmett has had a working relationship with Scorsese dating back to the famed director’s 2016 passion project “Silence,” based on Shusaku Endo’s novel about the persecution of Christians in 17th century Japan. Emmett and EFO Films came aboard the project as producers and financiers, allowing Scorsese to move forward on the film after more than two decades of setbacks. Emmett later served as a producer on Scorsese’s 2019 film “The Irishman,” which was released on Netflix and had a $150 million budget with CGI used to de-age the film’s stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.
