If there is a writers strike, it won’t be like 2007
What will it mean if the WGA and AMPTP can't come to an agreement? Here's what a Hollywood work stoppage could like like in 2023.
Aux News Labor in the United States
The current contract for the television and film writers of the Writers Guild of America expires on May 1. That means that if negotiations don’t succeed between the WGA and The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (the “entertainment industry’s official collective bargaining representative” that represents the major American TV and film production companies), the guild will officially go on strike May 2—an outcome that looks more likely with each passing day. So what will that mean for Hollywood, and what does it mean for the audiences at home?
It won’t mean the same thing it did in 2007, when a 100-day strike ground the entertainment industry to a halt. Back then, the effects of a strike were not only noticeable but had a long-lasting impact; shows went off the air, and some of them never came back.
To be clear, the guild is calling for the same kind of work stoppage that occurred back then. The WGA released its list of strike rules on Tuesday (per Variety), dictating a complete halt to any writing, pitching or negotiating for work during a strike. Non-WGA members who use the strike as an opportunity to do screenwriting work will be barred from joining the guild in the future, a deterrent to keep aspiring writers from crossing the picket line.
Meanwhile, other Hollywood unions including SAG-AFTRA, the DGA, IATSE, and Teamsters Local 399 have expressed their support for the WGA, with the latter group pledging not to cross the picket line. (Members of the other unions have no-strike clauses requiring them to show up to work, at least until the expiration of their own contracts.) Shutting down the writing side and receiving solidarity from Teamsters (who include studio drivers, dispatchers and warehousemen) will absolutely throw a wrench into the Hollywood machinery.
However, as writers have warned and Ted Sarandos has reassured, studios have a backlog of content to feed to their audiences in the case of a work stoppage.
The Bear writer Alex O’Keefe recently told The A.V. Club that the streaming “mini room” system has allowed companies to collect unmade scripts that could be moved into production. But even if solidarity from other unions did gum up the production side, the studios likely still have other avenues to mitigate a strike’s effects. Netflix, for instance, already plans its slate far enough in advance that co-CEO Sarandos confidently proclaimed “we can probably serve our members better than most” in the event of a lengthy strike. “We really don’t want this to happen, but we have to make plans for the worst, so we do have a pretty robust slate of releases to take us into a long time,” he said.
Studios can also look internationally to fill the gaps; the last strike saw a rise in programming of Canadian series on broadcast networks (per The Hollywood Reporter). Netflix—which has been, time and again, the canary in the coal mine of the streaming era—announced earlier this week a plan to invest major money into South Korean series, a veritable treasure trove of content that will certainly help keep the streamer afloat.
This is not to say the strike will be completely invisible to a casual television viewer. Late-night talk shows and Saturday Night Live will have to close up shop. Network shows still in production would have to close their writers’ rooms, too, but crucially, there are fewer of those than there used to be. Now, television’s formula favors shorter seasons that often complete the writing process before filming even begins. As such, studios may be able to feed their audiences a steady stream of content throughout a potential strike. Perhaps this time around, the WGA and its allies will have to find new ways of communicating the urgency of their mission to the folks at home. We’ll find out if that will be the case soon enough.
45 Comments
Well, sure, there’s like a hundred thousand more TV shows than there were in 2007.
With whole seasons written and produced before being released all at once, we won’t see midseason shifts or disappearances.If they stopped putting out shows, I would maybe be caught up on the backlog by the time new stuff started.Hold out until you get every last drop, writers.
Which says to be any holdout will a be lot more painful this time since the backlog of available content (plus shows in the vault) is far greater than 16 years ago.
I think it’s a matter of painful to who. Won’t be painful to me, but hopefully painful to the corporations.
Whom.
Thanks
Youm, that’s whom.
I have to think it will be much tougher on writers this time, with all that inventory of content available.
Because corps are better able to hold out riding off their back catalog? It’ll be a good test of stickiness to subscriptions – will people cancel once new content stops being released? Maybe they’ll find out what actually drives subs – is it back catalog, new schlock like House Hunters, new prestige stuff like Succession, etc
Hold out until you get every last drop, writers.Yeah, this might not be great advice. I question the wisdom of striking right after companies start releasing AIs that can do 80% of your job nearly instantly.
I question the wisdom of striking right after companies start releasing AIs that can do 80% of your job nearly instantly. They’re striking because their contract is up. Also, that second part isn’t really true. AI can mimic a script, but it can’t replicate human emotion/the human experience yet. That being said, AI is for sure on the WGAs radar and plate for negotiations.
I think they need to strike now before those AIs get even better, to protect the future of the industry.
AIs that can do 80% of your job nearly instantly.
Except they can’t actually do that.
I’m not saying they’re gonna produce the next The Wire, but I’d say they can do most of the work to churn out a new The Bing Bang Theory or The Walking Dead script. They’re only getting better. You definitly need someone shaping and editing the output but that’s where the 20% comes in. Also obviously I made those numbers up.
You still have to have a bunch of other trades go along with that.Even if Chris Evans were willing to be in a movie produced by AI, he’d tacitly know there’s no reason his role can’t be next. Especially because there are no laws on training AI… yet.
Well, one reason is that I think it’d be considerably more expensive to CGI a decent looking fake leading man than to just pay Evans. Plus CGI shops can barely keep up with the workloads they have now.Not an expert though. and point taken.
In the end it’s really about us, the audience anyway. If we won’t buy something they won’t make it. If we will, everything in it can be AI generated. Sort of why every business has an ethical slippery slope when you come right down to it.
Yo! Where my Falling Skies peeps at? The Last Ship is on deck and then I guess 21,000 seasons of Supernatural. I could give zero fucks about this strike.
Seriously. I have just…thousands of hours of TV that I need to catch up on. A strike would actually do me a lot of good. Good luck to them. Damn the man.Though that said, if I’m just watching older stuff on Netflix or HboMax or Hulu or whatever, they’re not really losing any money, so maybe I would be hurting the cause. Well I can always just read.
Writers should take whatever pay they can get before ScriptGPT makes them obsolete in 5-10 years.
I wonder if that’s one of the WGAs complaints. Or is AI so new that they will have to have another Strike to deal with it?
It was not one of the original core complaints but has been lightly thrown in there last minute. They probably need another full strike to deal with it, imo.
I’m kinda curious how you deal with it though. I guess the studios could promise to never say “we don’t need writers” and start releasing movies that were openly written by ChatGPT or whatever. But unless there’s some tool to tell if something is AI written even after a human has done a pass on it…And how many unscrupulous writers are going to be turning in scripts where the AI at least majorly helped? It’s interesting that they have a tool that can both make their jobs easier, and also risk destroying a lot of them.
I think using AI as a tool is totally fine, as long as there’s actually a human working on the movie. It’s not all good or all bad. Obviously an AI alone is going to produce a generic product that lacks the soul of what actual human writers would create, and obviously its overuse would absolutely destroy the industry. But I definitely think it has uses here, as it does in other places, even as just a way to work around writers’ block or as a last ditch place to get inspiration from. Also I think there’s a difference between having an AI come up with a full story or script, or having an AI suggest an idea, or inputing prompts to guide the AI. I think that they’d have to make it so that the movies have actual verifiable writers on the pay roll, so that the studios can’t use it to save money. Maybe there’s also consequences for a writer if they’re found to have been regularly using an AI too heavily?
This post probably comes across as more pro-AI than I actually am, I’m very very concerned about what it could mean in the future, and don’t want tons of AI written products. Just acknowledging that its utility is real, and that it can be thought of as just another tool with the right controls put on it.
The last I knew of the ask was that no AI could be credited. So a registered writer would have to be credited with a script *even if* it was 100% generated by AI. Which is not actually possible, but the point stands. The WGA wants human writers to get paid.Me personally, as a guy who teaches screenwriters? Fuck AI so hard it implodes. I’m not teaching writers how to become fucking prompt generators. Fuck AI, fuck executives looking to cheap out by using AI, fuck audiences who don’t give a shit if AI creates their pablum… Ugh.
FWIW, I don’t think the post sounds pro AI. That said, some of what you mention as its usefulness I see as the consequence of a shitty writer. There are craft solutions to writers block, generally involving a solid outline created well in advance. A screenwriter who can’t generate an idea shouldn’t be doing it at all. AI is nothing but a crutch for a screenwriter. I can’t speak with authority to other arts that are seeing its use but I suspect there are similar arguments.
I don’t think you’re totally wrong, and I wasn’t endorsing using it as a crutch for bad writing. I imagine that even good writers get blocked occasionally. I wasn’t even suggesting its use in a final draft. But I imagine a situation where someone could use it to throw a few different possibilities around a problem to quickly envision alternate routes, and then throwing everything the AI did out to write your own version. But I think the implications of it, and the perverse incentives that go with using it, means that a majority of people willing to use it wouldn’t be that responsible.
It is actually. Companies are already showing interest in using AI to generate a shitty, but full, script based off an idea. They then hire an actual writer to punch it up and fix it to be good, which in their view, eliminates a lot of time and need to pay someone for a full job on a script.
the last strike saw a rise in programming of Canadian series on broadcast networksWell yeah, the World Canada Bureau had to do something after they failed to get that internet money.
Lol, old reference but a goodie.
Well when discussing a writer’s strike I think it’s pretty relevant, buddy.
I’m not your buddy, pal!!!
I’m not your pal, guy!
I’m not your guy, friend!!!
He’s not your friend, buddy!
They won’t be making Quantum of Solace again?
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Some of the best porn ever came out in 2007. What a coincodink!
From IndieWire https://www.indiewire.com/2017/04/below-the-line-crew-wga-writers-strike-1201806937/.“The ripple effect of a writers’ strike could put thousands of cinematographers, costume designers, production designers, prop masters — and the people employed in their departments — out of work.” What a mess. Do these folks have unions also?
Yes. And the majority are in solidarity.
I just learned in this piece that SAG, DGA and IATSE all have no-strike clauses in their contracts, preventing them from honoring the picket line. I seriously hope those labor groups work hard to eliminate those clauses from future contracts.
I ended up reading about that too. I don’t understand why a union would have a no-strike clause? Isn’t that a union’s most powerful tool, wft?
I presume that including a no-strike clause was tied to getting better pay and benefits in the contract. I’m pretty sure that some public sector unions wind up with similar contract language.
IATSE.From the article: “Meanwhile, other Hollywood unions including SAG-AFTRA, the DGA, IATSE, and Teamsters Local 399 have expressed their support for the WGA, with the latter group pledging not to cross the picket line.”