According to several press reports, the Writers Guild of America denied a request to waive the strike for the two most important award shows, the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.

"We must do everything we can to bring our negotiations to a swift and fair conclusion for the benefit of writers and all those who are being harmed by the companies' failure to engage in serious negotiations," WGA, West President Patric Verrone wrote in a letter to academy executive director Bruce Davis.

"Our board concluded, reluctantly, that granting a waiver for the Academy Awards would not advance that goal."

The Writers Guild of America thus effectively blocked the Academy from using clips from past Oscars shows during next year's ceremony, in addition to blocking writers from helping write host Jon Stewart's script.

"The Golden Globe Awards, which has a long and friendly relationship with the Writers Guild of America, is obviously disappointed that the WGA denied its request for a waiver," Dick Clark Productions, the company responsible for producing the Globes ceremony, said in a statement.

There's no end in sight for the seven-week Writers Guild of America strike which has crippled the movie industry. Negotiations between the striking Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers have failed once again on Dec. 7 and talks broke off.

It's highly unlikely that a deal will be reached this year.

The WGA are pushing for more residuals from new media distribution (such films or TV shows sold online), while producers reject the guild's demands as unworkable and too expensive. Also, the WGA-requested compensation package for DVD sales would cost about $220 million over three years, a small fraction of the around $24 billion in revenues generated by U.S. DVD sales and rentals over the last year.