[1] In 2019, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) sued several large talent agencies over the practice, arguing that they created conflicts of interest between the agents and those they represented.
[3] In June 1942, Feldman signed Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, and John Wayne, and presented them, along with the script and director, as a package to Universal Pictures for the film Pittsburgh.
[4] Freddie Fields and David Begelman have also been credited with pioneering the movie "package" at their agency Creative Management Associates in the early 1970s.
[10] In 2019, David Simon published a letter detailing how packaging incentivized his agents to work against his best interests on the deal for the television show Homicide: Life on the Street.
[11] Simon's letter eventually led to a breakdown between the Writers Guild of America (WGA, the labor union representing screenwriters in the US) and the Association of Talent Agents (ATA, the group representing the major agencies), when the sides were unable to negotiate a "Code Of Conduct" agreement that addressed the concerns of packaging, resulting in the mass firing of talent agents by all WGA members on April 15, 2019.