David Simon, creator of shows as iconic in television history as The Wire and fictional characters as idiosyncratic as criminal calculator Stringer Bell and workaholic cop Jimmy McNulty, announced yesterday that HBO, the television network and now a streaming platform where he has worked for more than 25 years had his contract suspended. The 63-year-old writer and journalist shared the decision on Twitter, blaming his participation in the Hollywood writers’ strike that began last week.
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“The day HBO called me to cancel my agreement after 25 years of writing television for them, I did the right thing,” he posted, along with video of a protest involving several Writers Guild workers of America (WGA) called for stable contracts just outside Silvercup Studios in Queens, New York. The message is a play on words, as “write” and “right” are pronounced the same in English.
From 2000’s The Corner, a co-creation with Ed Burns, to We Own This City, a six-part miniseries released last year in the Baltimore Cop universe, Simon has written and served as executive producer worked for numerous television series that deal with social and political issues, such as Treme (2010), Show me a Hero (2015) or The Deuce (2017). He was recently working on creating a historical miniseries about the Abraham Lincoln Battalion that came to Spain from the United States to fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War, entitled A Dry Run, according to the IMDb portal.
Hollywood screenwriters have been on strike for seven days in the industry’s sixth strike and the first of the streaming era. At the moment the positions are very far apart after a week of mobilizations, a situation that could have serious consequences for studios and the film industry in general if an agreement is not reached soon. The Alliance of Film and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents major Hollywood film labels and platforms such as Apple, Netflix and Amazon, is not bowing to the writers’ union’s demands.
Talk shows were the first to be hit by the work stoppage as the shows are timely. Late night shows headlined by Jimmy Fallon on NBC, Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, or Stephen Colbert on CBS have begun airing reruns. But the conflict will also affect the negotiations that the directors’ union will begin this week. The contract with the DGA (Directors Guild of America) expires on June 30th. That union hasn’t gone on strike in 40 years, but the discussion over streaming platform royalties, another key point for directors, could change everything. After the directors, it’s the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA’s turn.
Aside from the night shows, HBO has also paralyzed the script progress of some series like Hacks – in which, oddly enough, one of the two protagonists is a screenwriter – or the Game of Thrones prequel, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. . . From other studies, series like Stranger Things, Cobra Kai (Netflix) or The Rings of Power (Prime Video) stand out. Actors including Cynthia Nixon, Rob Lowe and Natasha Lyonne have joined writers’ pickets outside studio offices in recent days, while others have taken to Twitter and Instagram to draw attention to the strike.
Prior to the protests, the WGA and AMPTP had failed to reach agreements to extend the contract for the next three years. The authors are demanding better working conditions, raises in pay and something new: payment of royalties for every airing of a TV show, series or film they are part of, known in the industry as residuals. They also require you to keep a minimum number of writers on the team for a certain period of time, whether they’re needed or not.
The last writers’ strike 15 years ago, when professionals took a 100-day hiatus, left the industry $2.1 billion in losses (according to the Milken Institute) and thousands of layoffs. There are no calculations yet as to what impact it may leave behind this time. The consensus is that this will be a long protest. It’s about defining the way of working in the age of content on demand.
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