LONDON — NATO will hold a closed-door meeting in London next month with screenwriter members of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, the latest in a series of engagements the alliance has organized with film and television professionals across Europe and the United States. The session follows three previous meetings held in Los Angeles, Brussels and Paris with screenwriters, directors and producers.

The London meeting will be conducted under the Chatham House rule, with discussion focused on the evolving security situation in Europe and beyond. James Appathurai, NATO's deputy assistant secretary general for hybrid, cyber and new technology, is planning to attend.

A NATO official described the program as part of a broader outreach effort. "The mentioned initiative is the fourth in a series of sessions for writers of fiction in the entertainment industry (including screenwriters, showrunners and authors)," the official said. "It follows from interest expressed by members of the industry to know more about what NATO is about and how it works." According to a message circulated to guild members, the previous meetings have already led to three separate projects in development inspired, at least in part, by the conversations.

A spokesperson for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, which represents professional writers in the UK, addressed the guild's role in passing on the invitation. "As a trade union representing screenwriters, we receive invitations from third-party organisations about events that may be of professional use or interest to our members," the spokesperson said. "These interactions do not necessarily represent an endorsement of these organisations."

The outreach has drawn objections from some writers. Alan O'Gorman, the writer of the film Christy, which won best film at the 2026 Irish Film & Television Awards, said he viewed the program as a messaging exercise. "The meetings are an attempt by NATO to get some of its messaging out there in film and TV," he said. "There's fearmongering throughout Europe at the moment that our defences are down. The Irish people, for the most part, don't want anything to do with wars on foreign lands."

Screenwriter and producer Faisal A Qureshi, who applied to attend the meeting but withdrew due to a scheduling conflict, raised concerns about the dynamics of such briefings. "The risk for any creative who dips into this unattributable world of intelligence or military briefings is that they can get seduced into thinking they now have some secret knowledge," Qureshi said. "That there exists a world of greys where morality is stretched and human right abuses are acceptable when done for the greater good. They've just been given something that has the veneer of truth given to it by an authority that rarely deals with the public and there is a sense of privilege about getting that access."

The Centre for European Reform released a report earlier this year calling on governments to engage with cultural leaders, including screenwriters and film producers, to build public support for greater defence spending. In 2024, eight screenwriters — including a writer and executive producer on the sitcom Friends, a writer on the crime procedural Law and Order, and a producer on the comedy detective drama High Potential — were invited to NATO's headquarters in Brussels by the Center for Strategic and International Studies to learn about security policy, meeting NATO's then-secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, during the trip.