The union, which represents 11,500 Hollywood writers, announced it would go on strike Monday at midnight, meaning some of America’s most popular late-night comedy shows will be repeated from Tuesday.
Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers will all be off the air immediately. The strike announced by the Writers Guild of America is the first time production crews have stopped work in 15 years.
The last strike lasted 100 days and cost Hollywood $2.1 billion.
Eventually, during the 2007 strike, late-night presenters returned to the air and improvised material. Jay Leno wrote his own monologues – a move that angered union leaders.
A big issue that’s vexing Hollywood writers is the problem of streaming services — and how they’ve impacted the economics of the business by causing people to make less money and work under tighter conditions.
Seth Meyers, host of NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, said Monday he supports the strike
Stephen Colbert (left) and Jimmy Kimmel (right) will not be hosting their Tuesday shows
Jimmy Fallon’s NBC show The Tonight Show will not air live Tuesday
Meyers, a union member, has been particularly vocal in support of the authors.
‘I like to write. I love writing for television. I love writing this series,” he said Monday afternoon.
“I love that every day we have an idea for what we want to do and we can work on it all afternoon and then I have the pleasure of coming here. Nobody is entitled to a job in show business.
“But those who have a job are entitled to fair compensation. They are entitled to make a living.
“I think it’s a very reasonable request to be made by the guild. And I support these demands.’
Other shows immediately affected include Real Time with Bill Maher, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Saturday Night Live – which Pete Davidson was scheduled to host on Saturday, the final night of the season.
One SNL star told Deadline: “We also have to think about our crew.
Pete Davidson is pictured at the Met Gala on Monday night. He was due to host Saturday Night Live this weekend: it’s unclear if the show, the last of the season, will go ahead
“I absolutely support the writers and want the writers to get what they deserve and need, but I don’t want our crew to be out of work. We cannot do this art without each other.”
The decision is the culmination of a months-long battle with studios over pay in the streaming age.
“The @WGAWest Board and @WGAEast Council, by virtue of the powers conferred upon them by their membership, have voted unanimously to call a strike effective Tuesday 2 May at 00:01,” the union said on Twitter announced.
They said the decision came after six weeks of discussions with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Warner Bros, Universal, Paramount and Sony.
“Although our negotiation committee began this process with the intention of making a fair deal, the studios’ responses have been woefully inadequate given the existential crisis writers face.
“The pickets will start tomorrow afternoon. #WGASstrong #WGAStrike’
In a statement, they said writers are facing an “existential crisis.”
Jimmy Fallon is seen at the Met Gala on Monday night with Gigi Hadid and Karen Elson
Fallon’s show will not air live Tuesday after the writers’ strike announcement
Fallon is seen with Jared Leto at the Met Gala on Monday
Writers are seen during the last strike in Los Angeles in 2007 which lasted 100 days
“The behavior of the companies has created a gig economy within a unionized workforce, and their unwavering stance in these negotiations has betrayed their commitment to further devaluing the writing profession,” the WGA said in a statement.
“From their refusal to guarantee any weekly employment in episodic television, to creating a ‘daily rate’ in comedy, to their blocking of freelance work for screenwriters and AI for all writers, they’ve shut the door on the workforce and opened it the door to writing as a fully freelance profession.
“This membership could never consider such a deal.”
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that negotiates on behalf of studios and production companies, signaled late Monday that negotiations had failed to result in an agreement before the current deal expired.
The AMPTP said it had presented an offer with “generous royalties increases for authors, as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”
In a statement, the AMPTP said it was willing to improve its offering, “but was unwilling to do so because there are many other proposals on the table that the guild continues to insist on.”
Depending on how long the strike lasts, the industrial action could have a cascading effect on TV and film production. However, due to the scale of the discord, a shutdown has been forecast for months.
The authors voted overwhelmingly last month to authorize a strike, with 98 percent of members in favour.
It’s about how writers are rewarded in an industry where streaming has changed the rules of the Hollywood economy.
Writers are pictured on strike in 2007 – the last time they voted to quit their jobs
Writers say they aren’t being paid enough, the spaces for television writers have shrunk too much, and the old calculus for paying out residuals needs to be reassessed.
“The survival of our profession is at stake,” the guild said.
Streaming has exploded the number of series and films produced each year, meaning more jobs for writers. But WGA members say they make far less money and work under more difficult conditions.
Showrunners in streaming series receive only 46 percent of the pay shown runners in television series, according to the WGA.
The guild is looking for more compensation for the front end of deals.
Many of the back-end payment authors that benefited in the past – like syndication and international licensing – were largely phased out by the start of streaming.
More authors—about half—are receiving minimum rates, a 16 percent increase over the past decade. The use of so-called mini-writer rooms has increased significantly.
The AMPTP said Monday that the main issues with a deal revolved around these mini-rooms – the guild is targeting a minimum number of writers per writer’s room – and the length of the employment restrictions.
The guild has said more flexibility is needed for writers when contracted for series, which tend to be more limited and short-lived than the once-standard 20+ episode broadcast season.
At the same time, studios are under increased pressure from Wall Street to turn a profit on their streaming services.
Many studios and production companies are cutting back on spending.
The Walt Disney Co. is cutting 7,000 jobs. Warner Bros. Discovery is cutting costs to reduce its debt. Netflix has pumped the pauses in spending growth.
When Hollywood writers went on strike, it was often protracted.
In 1988, a WGA strike lasted 153 days. The last WGA strike lasted 100 days, beginning in 2007 and ending in 2008.
Scripted series and films will take longer to be affected.
But if a strike lasts through the summer, autumn plans could be upended.
And in the meantime, not having writers available for paraphrases can have a dramatic impact on quality.
The James Bond film Quantum of Solace was one of many films that went into production during the 2007-2008 strike with what Daniel Craig called “the bare skeleton of a screenplay”.
“Then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do,” Craig later said.
“We couldn’t hire a writer to finish it. I tell myself never again, but who knows? I tried to rewrite scenes – and I’m not a writer.’
With a long-awaited strike, writers have rushed to submit scripts and studios have tried to prepare their pipelines to continue producing content, at least in the short term.
“From a business standpoint, we’re assuming the worst,” David Zaslav, chief executive officer of Warner Bros. Discovery, said last month.
“We got ready. We had a lot of content being produced.’
Overseas series could also fill part of the gap.
“If there is one, we have a large base of upcoming shows and movies from around the world,” Netflix co-head Ted Sarandos said on the company’s April conference call.
But the WGA strike could be just the beginning.
Both the Directors Guild of America and the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA have contracts that expire in June.
Some of the same issues surrounding the streaming business model will feed into these rounds of negotiations.
The DGA is expected to begin negotiations with AMPTP on May 10th.