Hollywood execs scrambling for response to writers strike literally everyone saw coming
As Day 2 of the 2023 writers strike continue, Hollywood execs are torn on responses
Aux News Writers Guild of America
As we now coast through what is officially Day 2 of the Writers Guild Of America’s ongoing strike, it turns out that—shock of shocks—the majority of the film and TV executives tasked with handling this seismic event from the studio’s side may not have been fully prepared for the realities of an industry-wide work shutdown. (This, despite the fact that the strike has been looming on the horizon for months now, as the WGA continues to push back against the corporations’ handling of residuals for streaming shows, which have seen writer paychecks drop heavily in recent years as one of their steadiest sources of income continued to dry up.)
As noted by THR, the most recent thing the studios did not prepare for (out of the many things they do not appear to have prepared for, including the fact that writers will get angry if you try to pay them way less for their work) might actually be kind of surprising: They currently have too many scripts sitting in their inboxes, instead of too few. Working writers being working writers, it turns out that a lot of the workers now striking submitted (or, in the words of one exec, “dumped”) scripts to the studios ahead of the Monday night deadline, and now there’s a glut. (Not that that will last; content mill gonna mill, after all.) The current issue facing execs, apparently, is that they’re not sure how to respond to these scripts: Normally, they’d send back notes to the writers as part of the next step for approval, but nobody appears to have put together a cohesive response for doing so now that said writers are operating under guild strike rules, including the key provision that, “You may not attend pitch meetings or communicate with a company representative to receive notes on literary material even if you intend to wait until the strike ends to make any requested changes.”
The response, apparently, has been scattershot: Execs at multiple companies have been told not to even send notes, lest they “add fuel to the fire.” Some are sending the notes along with a disclaimer saying, basically, “Please don’t look at or think about these until the strike is over.” Others are apparently going with a writer-by-writer basis, depending on who’ll be more receptive; some have even said that they like “the idea of being able to get a jump on things when the strike ultimately concluded.” The central issue is that none of them seem to have had a plan in place to deal with this, even though it was completely predictable; meanwhile, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of reflection, either, on the fact that none of these people actually have very much to do, professionally, if writers aren’t providing them with material to work on.
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Best summary of the stakes I’ve read so far: Ivy League MBA tech bros ruin everything.https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1653280876753719296.html
Oh, they were prepared. They urged writers to hurry up and do as much work as possible before the deadline, and they ordered fewer pilots than usual because they didn’t want to pay for the lease on studio space if a strike shut down production. Even this story sounds more like execs bragging that they have so many scripts, they can drag the strike out longer than the previous ones in the eighties and ‘07/‘08. It puts pressure on the writers to cave.
Yep. Corporate executives usually know ahead of time whenever something that will affect them and their profit is about to occur; economic downturns and worker mobility. I still remember a certain executive CEO literally warning other CEOs about the rise of unions during the pandemic’s peak.
Yeah the headline and slant of this article are weird. I get wanting to be snark about the capitalist overlords, but it’s not like they didn’t expect to have scripts with no writers to work on. They knew that. The fact that they’re doing different things about it doesn’t mean they weren’t prepared.
Yeah producers know what they can and cannot do. They just whining hoping for sympathy. Its really simple, they can either use the script as is, or not. If they go with “or not”, they are stuck with the consequences of moving forward. Which if recall from last strike, often resulted in a mess of bad episodes and movies. Well “worse.” Example being Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. That was made with a draft script due to the strike. It was then made worse by the limits of the edits they are allow to make (yep there are guild guidelines on how much can change script without the writers) mixed with Bay’s way of story creation (there is a reason he isn’t a writer). The result is something that stank finding a new level of stink.
Some studio bean counter is going to try and make ChatGPT try to happen here.
That’s actually a big part of all this. The WGA stipulations for the new contract included an item saying that the studios could not use AI to write scripts or provide re-writes for scripts. Studio response to that was to try to amend that item to make it a yearly conversation with the WGA as the technology evolves. Basically them trying to leave the door open for the ultimate goal: axing writers in favor of content-creating bots.
It doesn’t sound like they didn’t prepare for it. It’s that they decided it’s a price they’re willing to pay in order to not pay their writers.
there’s still writers after the 2007/2008 strike? I sure haven’t seen any.. the ‘writing’ since then has been atrocious.
writers will get angry if you try to pay them way less for their work-The AV Club