Low-budget action movie producer Randall Emmett recently unveiled a high-profile collaboration with Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese to bring the story of a deadly 1982 avalanche near Lake Tahoe to the big screen.
The project, “Wall of White,” is being produced and financed by Emmett’s production firm, Convergence Entertainment Group, according to Hollywood trade site Deadline.
But the Writers Guild of America West issued an advisory Wednesday forbidding its members from working on the film.
The guild cited Emmett’s failure to pay writers for work on past projects. Since 2020, Emmett has been on the guild’s “strike 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 WGA said in the email, adding that guild rules “prohibit members from working for or selling literary material to companies or individuals who are on the Strike/Unfair List.”
Scorsese and his representatives were not immediately available for comment.
“We are fully financing this movie, and we have every intention to settle this dispute in the coming weeks,” Emmett told The Times. “Our representatives will be reaching out to the Writers Guild so we can put this matter from six years ago behind us.”
Leila Azari, a senior WGA attorney, told The Times: “Emmett has stated multiple times in the past that he would pay and never has.”
Emmett was the subject of a 2022 Times investigation and subsequent Hulu documentary that surfaced allegations of abuse against women and assistants as well as mistreatment of assistants and business partners, which he has denied.
The “Wall of White” project draws on a 2010 book as well as a 2021 documentary, “Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche.” After a heavy spring storm in Northern California in 1982, tons of snow roared down a mountain and into a village, trapping eight people at a ski resort. Seven died, and rescuers pulled one woman from the wreckage.
Screenwriter Petter Skavlan, a WGA member, is attached to the film, according to IMDb. Book author Jennifer Woodlief also is listed as a screenwriter. She is not a member of the WGA, according to the guild.
Emmett has been working on the project for about a year and introduced the Netflix documentary to Scorsese, according to a March article in the Tahoe Guide, which touted how the local tragedy was being adapted into a feature film by Convergence and Scorsese.
The article cited a news release from Realization Films, a Northern California firm that includes the “Buried” documentary producers, Jared Drake and Steven Siig, as well as executive producer Mark Gogolewski. All have signed on to the Emmett project, according to their website.
The news reports said the movie was expected to go into production this year. No director has been attached.
Emmett formed Convergence Entertainment Group in early 2022 with Miami financier Joel Cohen, according to Nevada business records. By that time, Emmett’s longtime shingle Emmett/Furla Oasis had collapsed under the weight of millions of dollars of debt to former financiers and co-producers.
The Writers Guild of America West won a $541,464 judgment against the now-defunct Emmett/Furla Oasis company in 2021 after it filed a claim on behalf of writers who alleged they were shortchanged for their work in 2019 on a television series that was supposed to feature former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the actor backed out and the show was never made.
With interest, the debt now tops $700,000, the guild says.
Last summer, the union added another firm that was created to buy source material for Emmett projects, 50 Feet Movies, to its strike list.
“We want to make sure that every WGA member knows about this project, and knows that they cannot work for Convergence Entertainment Group … in connection with this project or any other project,” Azari said in an interview. “They cannot work for Randall Emmett.”
Despite the demise of his former production company, a trail of lawsuits and bad publicity, Emmett continues to to line up producing partners and big-name stars to make his small-budget films.
His association with Scorsese dates back more than a decade. In 2013, Emmett became an unlikely savior for Scorsese, who had tried for 15 years to secure financing for a project about Portuguese Jesuit priests in the 17th century investigating Catholic persecution.
None of the major studios would touch “Silence,” but after a call from Scorsese’s agent, Ari Emanuel of WME, Emmett jumped at the chance.
Emmett and his then-partner George Furla reportedly raised half of the $46.5-million budget for the film featuring Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield.
In exchange for backing “Silence,” Emmett earned a producing credit — and eventually an Oscar nomination — on Scorsese’s next film, the 2019 mob epic “The Irishman” for Netflix.