Hollywood writers strike for first time since 2007, with streaming in focus
Charley Gallay/Getty Images News
Hollywood writers voted Monday night to go on strike just after midnight Pacific Time -- the first such labor stoppage in the entertainment industry since the strike of 2007, and one that once again threatened to slow program production that had recovered from deep COVID-19 pandemic stoppages.
The Writers Guild of America West and Writers Guild of America East voted unanimously to authorize the strike and begin picketing Tuesday afternoon.
"The decision was made following six weeks of negotiating with Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Disney (NYSE:DIS), Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), NBCUniversal (CMCSA), Paramount+ (PARA) (PARAA) and Sony (SONY) under the umbrella of the [Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers]," the WGA West said.
"The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing," the Guild added.
Guild members will be prohibited from working on struck productions, and will be unable to sell or pitch scripts.
While network shows will see their pipelines start to empty, immediate effects will be felt on late-night talk shows, Deadline noted, with all set to go dark and replace their new programming with reruns starting Tuesday.
The 2007 strike, 100 days long, cost billions of dollars in lost output, and wiped out a quarter of prime-time programming for the network TV season. In the years since, much has changed about how people view television.
For one thing, streaming was brand new back then, and now it's at the center of negotiations, with writers seeking more inclusion in residuals and back-end payments.
Also notable in the new negotiations is (of course) AI, and how the union will be able to protect jobs amid the new technological tools. The union is also looking to curb the practice (fed heavily by the new streaming providers) of creating "mini-rooms," smaller groups of writers producing scripts in advance of the production of a series.
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Comments (155)
@Mrholiday Interesting recent stories: Succession, Severance, Better Call Saul, Rick & Morty, Curb Your Enthusiasm, White Lotus, Perry Mason, Under the Banner of Heaven, The Last of Us. Not much swapping going on there and what there is, seems to work.
I bet the tens of thousands of content creators producing content on YouTube won't be participating, or care and will likely benefit. It ain't 2007 anymore, good luck.
@Dives in Aeternum AI won't be participating. The foreign writers who produce a lot of streaming content lately won't be either. I don't think the WGA has the leverage they think they do.
People should be striking against hollywood writers, the writers do nothing but promote and propagate the democrat's culture wars. Fire them all...
@kata I never watch...
@I_Am_The_Walrus
You are a hypocrite. Stop commenting here if you dont watch. While I agree with Kata on brainrot, Tiktok is like smoking 10 cigarettes in your mouth all the time to the TV one pack a day smoking.
You are a hypocrite. Stop commenting here if you dont watch. While I agree with Kata on brainrot, Tiktok is like smoking 10 cigarettes in your mouth all the time to the TV one pack a day smoking.
Very funny read:Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is one of the entertainment companies represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Some editorial employees of the NBCUniversal News Group are represented by the Writers Guild of America.
@Paul Deeb An AI-written script would be nothing special. Okay most TV and movie writing is nothing special but why would anyone take your mediocre script in particular and use it to make a movie that people would watch, by adding the factors that make them popular, namely expensive production values and big IP?I see two big use cases for AI writing:1. Mary Sue uses AI to write a Harry Potter fanfic starring herself. Maybe she can create some visuals to go with it and turn it into a little fanfilm, uploaded to YouTube. Her coterie of friends will adore it. Everyone else will ignore it, which is good, otherwise Warners lawyer might show some interest in the copyright infringement.Everyone can do this now so multiply this times millions. That's a lot of new content and ad revenue for YouTube and time people are devoting to their own and their friends' fanfilms that isn't being spent on professionally made media. Movie studios and streaming platforms will take a hit but this won't destroy their business model. This is just an extension of what already happens on YouTube.2. Warners kicks JK Rowling to the curb and uses AI to write their new Harry Potter series. They might as well, Harry Potter is just a compendium of cliches that Rowling filched from elsewhere, that's something AI is perfectly capable of doing. And I'm not picking on Harry Potter, most big IP content is so poorly written (just look at the Star Wars prequel and sequel movies, plus Obi Wan and Boba Fett on Disney+) that AI might be able to do a better job. The advantage here will be to the owners of big IP, since they can reduce costs by not hiring writers. I'm not sure how soon AI can create eye-popping visuals of the Avatar type, but when that happens, then Hollywood can really cut costs. This will more than make up for the Mary Sue problem.Moral of the story: the AI takeover means big IP wins because it's the only defense against the democratization of content and the destruction of the entire business model of Hollywood. If Mary Sue's Harry Potter fantasy takes off like a rocket on YouTube, Warners lawyers can lower the boom when it reaches a threshold of awareness, popularity and ad revenues going to Google and not Warners. If Mary Sue somehow manages to be successful with her own original IP, then she's a threat to Hollywood, but I don't expect this to happen very often. The reason stuff takes off like a rocket is because there's a built-in fanbase.
@Paul Deeb The main holdup there is that individuals don't have the right to big IP. They can try to create and promote original IP but how often does that happen? It just gets ignored in favor of what people are already fans of.The route for ordinary folks is via another medium: novels, graphic novels, games. JK Rowling was a nobody who invented her own IP in books. GRR Martin wasn't exactly a nobody when he wrote the Game of Thrones series, but same general idea. The Last of Us was a video game, Sandman was a graphic novel, etc.
Will my US Netflix no longer have new content from foreign countries? I doubt it. Ditto for all the other streamers. All those shows are effectively crossing the picket line.
You mean left-wing, liberal companies won't give the Dem-run unions everything they want? hahahahahahaha
@MAYHAWK If you think Zaslav is left-wing, or anybody who is the CEO of a PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANY-- I've got a bridge to sell you.
@Code Talker Market Analysis I certainly think FOX need your bridge :D
@Code Talker Market Analysis
You missed the point. They profess to support the liberal socialist line until it comes time to put up or shut up. Then they fall back on good old capitalism and bring down the financial hammer.
You missed the point. They profess to support the liberal socialist line until it comes time to put up or shut up. Then they fall back on good old capitalism and bring down the financial hammer.
AI? Interesting. Saw what happened to Chegg, Inc. yesterday. Personally need to start thinking more about impact on investments. As for writers, they might want to start diversifying.
The more I study this issue, the more I have to laugh. Literally, you can do a screenplay these days using the assistance of ChatGPT. It's a low-value occupation, which really should pay maybe $15 or $20 an hour. These people are demented thinking they deserve above-market salaries.
@Non-GAAP Earnings If those are the screenplays you want, you deserve them: those would be terrible movies/shows.
@Code Talker Market Analysis The way to use ChatGPT is not to have it write your script from scratch. We're a long way from that. You use it to sketch out broad plotlines and you have it help you with clever lines. It makes the job of a screenwriter way easier, in other words, and greatly expands the pool of people who can write a good screenplay.
@Non-GAAP Earnings I'm a writer, and I tried ChatGPT. It might help write plotlines and phrases for a bunch of drooling stupid people, but not for most real audiences.
A writer should write a screen play about this.
But they cannot, because they are not working.
But they cannot, because they are not working.
@Chancer It is funny when you think about the word "working." You have people who get to go to Starbucks and just write stuff on their laptops, and they actually get paid crazy amounts. This is from Indeed.com: "Screenwriters typically receive between 2% to 3% of the production budget of the film or project, which can be a lot if the budget is large. For example, a screenwriter who creates a screenplay for a film with an $800,000 budget that pays them 3% earns $24,000 for their work." Meanwhile, many folks like auto mechanics, plumbers or roofers have to do real work and get paid far less.
@Non-GAAP Earnings Do you think 24k is a lot?
@Code Talker Market Analysis In the example given by Indeed, an $800,000 film is a very low-budget one, and I would think 3% is more than fair. You go to Starbucks and write the script, send it off and your work is done. If you look at a $50 million film, 3% of that is $1.5 million. That's *way* more than fair.
How we judge writing is subjective. I d have a few changes I would love to see. 1. Turn on the lights. Stop filming movies in low lighting. If you can’t do your CGI in full lighting, don’t to it.2. Don’t ever again make more than one sequel. 3. Make an American police show that doesn’t involve pretty people whipping out their Glocks and yelling “stop ! Police” from 50 feet away and then doing a foot chase. Watch a few British cop shows to se how that works.4. How did something as funny as Big Bang evolve into a depressing show about family issues called Young Sheldon? Stop doing that.5. A good detective show doesn’t need to add the detectives baggage or the criminals baggage for that matter. These are just a few obvious examples that I thing could be improved on. I think my problems with current entertainment lie more with production than writing but what do I know.
@Alice21 One show I think you'd like is the cop show Hunter from the 1980s. Full episodes are on Youtube.
Oh wow I guess that means no more superhero sequels ( or sequels in general ) that's all they ever seem to “write” anyway
Remember when white collar professionals (like journalists and movie/TV writers) looked down on factory workers and coal miners and arrogantly told laid off blue collar workers to simply "learn to code"?Pepperidge Farm remembers...
@sdavid04191 Laws of supply and demand. American colleges pump out zillons of new graduates every year who have the ability to write scripts, so there's no particular reason they should be paid inordinate salaries. I agree about the "stars"--if studios were smart they would study what franchises like SNL do, which is to hire unknown actors for cheap.
@Non-GAAP Earnings The average American college graduate has the "ability to write scripts" in the same way that the average toddler with a paintbrush has the ability to paint a picture.
@Pitnick I Googled and saw that there are about 28,000 English literature majors produced by US colleges each year. If you took those in the top 1%, that's 280 new screenwriters each year. That's plenty, and there's no reason to pay these people crazy above-market salaries just to go to Starbucks and type stuff on their laptops.