film industry
Members of the Writers Guild of America are striking major studios demanding higher wages and rules for AI
Outside of Amazon Studios in Los Angeles, Hollywood’s flashy writers had a promise to studio execs: “AI will replace you before it replaces us.”
Carrying the AI slogan sign, Diandra Pendleton-Thompson, 32, braced for what could be a long battle with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Hairdressers, cameramen, caterers: The “scary” domino effect of the Hollywood writers’ strike
The 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike Tuesday, sending hundreds in Los Angeles and New York to picket lines outside major studios like Amazon, Netflix, Paramount and Warner Brothers instead of their writers’ rooms. As they negotiate a new deal with major studios, writers argue that the rise of the online streaming era has left them behind, resulting in lower pay and less stable work, and are calling for new rules for how studios use artificial intelligence in writing Use in movies and TV shows.
Some impacts of the new strike will be immediately visible to audiences: late-night comedy shows went dark on Tuesday, and favorites like The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live are expected to air reruns in lieu of new material. It’s unclear how long the writers will be on strike before their union can reach an agreement with studio managers. The last writers’ strike in Hollywood, in 2007, lasted 100 days.
“Fists up, pens down, LA is a union town!” Writers outside Amazon Studios chanted Tuesday, with many high-profile writers wearing blue Writers Guild T-shirts as they marched, demanding better pay and protections in an era of streaming dominance .
For Pendleton-Thompson, a Star Trek writer who worked for years as a Hollywood assistant before joining the Writers Guild in 2021, the strike means financial uncertainty and negotiations for dream film projects are suddenly in limbo. But she believes the fight is worth it.
She is particularly concerned that studios are using AI for stories about people of color and people with disabilities: “We’re going to get the stories from people who have been disempowered and not from people who have experienced it, but through the voice of the algorithm told.
“I think it’s the start of a larger discussion about how AI will be used to continue funneling money straight to the top, rather than distributing it to the hard-working people who built this industry,” she added.
Still, the need for the strike, which comes so shortly after the economic challenges of the pandemic, is “sad,” especially for newer writers like herself, Pendleton-Thompson said.
“It’s hard to see that these bases that we just got look like they’re slipping away,” she said.
Brittani Nichols, a writer on the hit series Abbott Elementary, picketed outside the Warner Brothers studio on Tuesday rather than begin work on the third season of her show, which was due to begin this week.
“It’s quite a funny coincidence that when the Writers Guild becomes more diverse than ever, the studios decide to pull the rug out from under us,” Nichols said, arguing that writers are increasingly like gig workers, not artists would be treated. “It feels like we’re being turned into content farms.”
Justice Hardy, a writer on the television series True Lies, holds up a sign as members of the Writers Guild of America outside Warner Bros Studios. Photo: Chris Pizzello/AP
Many of the Writers Guild captains who organize the pickets are “people of color and people from not particularly privileged backgrounds who stand up and say, ‘We’re not going to take this,'” Nichols said. “Writing was a way into a middle-class life.”
“Now that’s being ripped away from us,” she added. “It’s not a sustainable career as it stands.”
On Tuesday, another author carried a sign outside Amazon Studios that read, “You can’t spell diversity without paying us!”
Erika L. Johnson, a writer for Ugly Betty, Queen Sugar and The Good Lord Bird who started out as a Hollywood assistant during the last writers’ strike, said it’s encouraging to see more writers of color entering the industry. A networking group she started for black women writers now has more than 200 members, she said.
But since the last writers’ strike in 2007, studios have been inventing new “loopholes” that result in more work for less pay, such as the “mini-rooms” of writers who finish scripts before a show even gets the green light she . “The fight goes on,” she said.
Alongside the balancing gaps between mains TV and streaming shows, the “mini rooms” have become a major strike issue: “What if I tell my landlord I’m only paying a mini rent this month?” Comedian Ashley Nicole Black quipped on Twitter.
Some writers said the strike is forcing a reckoning with the gap between perceptions of Hollywood success and an often difficult financial reality for most workers.
“If we’re telling the truth about what’s happening behind the scenes in this business, it’s not all celebrities, it’s not the whole Met Gala,” said Alex O’Keefe, a speechwriter-turned-television writer for the critically acclaimed Show The Bear was set in a sandwich shop in Chicago.
O’Keefe said that despite posing for a Getty photographer, he was still making payments for the bow tie he rented to attend an awards gala for The Bear and that his bank account had a negative balance.
The writers’ strike is expected to have a far-reaching impact on workers across Hollywood. But unions of other film industry workers, from the Teamsters to unions representing directors, actors, stagehands and hair and makeup specialists, have issued statements supporting the writers’ strike. More strikes could follow this summer in Hollywood: The contracts of both the Directors Guild of America and the actors’ union Sag-Aftra expire in June.
As cars rolled past the picket line outside Amazon’s Culver City studios, many drivers honked their horns in approval, and the picket line responded with cheers.
Studio executives have been anticipating the strike for months and have been making contingency plans for how to work without writers, including rushing to submit scripts before the strike deadline.
“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. “We have a large base of upcoming shows and movies from around the world,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on the company’s April conference call.
The Associated Press contributed to the coverage.
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