The strike of film and television writers in the United States has put the entertainment industry in jeopardy this past Tuesday.
The writers agreed to stop working after talks with major studios broke down over their salaries. Around 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted in favor of the strike starting from midnight on Monday.
It is expected that Tuesday night’s television programs will be the first affected, while future series and movies could suffer delays.
In 2007, writers went on strike for 100 days, which had an estimated impact of around $2 billion for the industry.
This time, the writers are facing the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents major studios including Amazon, Disney, Netflix, and Paramount, demanding higher salaries and a greater share in current streaming profits.
On Monday night, the WGA said the strike decision was made after six weeks of negotiations that produced a “totally insufficient” response to “the existential crisis that writers face.
A key issue is how writers are paid for programs that often remain on online platforms for years, but there are also discussions about the future impact of artificial intelligence on scripts.
The AMPTP said it had offered a “comprehensive package proposal” that included higher salaries for writers.
But the association was not willing to further improve that offer “due to the magnitude of other proposals that are still on the table and that the union continues to insist on.”
On Sunday night, Deadline Hollywood reported that production of popular late-night shows, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, would have to stop.
Colbert, who recorded his program before negotiations collapsed, shared a picture of his writers while expressing his support for the sector in his monologue on Monday night.
At the Met Gala, Fallon said he hoped the strike would not go ahead but at the same time wished for a “fair deal” for the writers: “I need my writers a lot, I don’t have a show without my writers.”
Late Night host Seth Meyers expressed his support for the strike on his show on Friday.
“I also firmly believe that what the writers are asking for is not unreasonable,” Meyers said. “As a proud member of the guild, I am very grateful that there is an organization that looks out for the best interests.”
The WGA has criticized studios for creating a “gig economy” aimed at turning script writing into a “fully freelance” profession, meaning independent employment and not guild employment.
“For the sake of our present and our future, we have not been given another option,” the guild said in an extensive document.
It called for a minimum television staff, ranging from 6 to 12 writers per program, as well as a guaranteed number of weeks of employment per season.
In its own statement on Tuesday, the AMPTP pointed out that these were the two “main sticking points.”
For their part, the studios said they must reduce costs due to financial pressures, while noting that payments to writers reached a historic high of $494 million in 2021.
The AMPTP also rejected the union’s demand to ban the use of AI bots to write or rewrite material, instead offering to hold “annual meetings to discuss technology advances.”
TYT Newsroom
