First modification:
In Hollywood the writers’ strike will take place. The Writers Guild of America (WGA), a writers’ union, is calling for better financial compensation in an industry transformed by streaming. No agreement had been reached with the television and film producers’ alliance prior to the strike.
The strike was announced well before the deadline. A sign of the irreconcilable differences between the two camps, reports our Los Angeles correspondent, Eric Pialat. The motion picture and television producers’ alliance’s proposals do not address “the existential crisis” facing screenwriters, according to the WGA. The studios, for their part, claim to have offered “generous” salary increases and an increase in broadcast rights. But they seem to have a problem with the guaranteed minimum number of writers on a series, as required by the WGA.
How many writers per series?
The WGA has been in negotiations with the alliance of channels and producers since March and has not reached an agreement on financial compensation for writers in an industry changed by streaming, but also on issues such as the minimum number of writers to write episodes. or the use of artificial intelligence by the studios.
Succession, produced by HBO, is one of the reference series. A season is ten episodes long, a format that has become the norm with streaming. It is half of what a series lasts on air channels. This is a problem when a writer is paid per episode and platforms tend to pay lower royalties.
Eric Haywood, a member of the WGA, details the deficit on the union’s website: “In the last ten years, the budget for streaming series has increased by 50%. But the salary of the writer-producer, adjusted for inflation, has decreased by 23%, and at the same time, the proportion of screenwriters working for the union minimum wage has increased from 33% to 50%.”
In an American industry where formulaic sequels and remakes are the order of the day, writers also worry that producers are turning to artificial intelligence. The strike should not immediately affect the cinema, where unlike television, the author is not on set every day.
Towards a general strike in the cinema?
“Many episodes have already been produced. So they will be broadcast as normal. Instead, late-night shows, as they are written the same day, will be affected immediately,” explains Gene Maddaus, a journalist for Variety.
But the unions of directors and actors will begin to negotiate in a few days. And if they don’t reach an agreement either, the industry will come to a complete standstill by summer. A nightmare scenario for Hollywood. The previous WGA strike, in 2007, lasted 100 days and cost Hollywood hundreds of millions of dollars. In 1988, it exceeded 150 days.
The first pickets are expected to appear in the afternoon in Los Angeles. This time, the WGA is said to have a $20 million fund to help its 11,000 members during the strike. For its part, Netflix told its investors that it has enough content in stock to keep offering new shows to its subscribers for a long time to come.
