This week, members of the Writers Guild of America are deciding whether to allow the strike. Online voting began on April 11 and will continue for a week, and British and Canadian writers’ guilds urged their members not to cross their strike queue if a strike advances. Meanwhile, some members began to share dismal personal anecdotes that touched on the state of the industry and explained their decision to vote “yes”.
Hollywood writers last authorized a strike in 2007; The strike lasted 100 days and in the end the WGA was victorious. Since then, the industry has changed, thanks in large part to streaming and a series of mergers that have eliminated competition for writers’ work. More writers work on their union’s minimum annual salary than a decade ago. Abbott Elementary School author Brittani Nichols,[O]We have a minimum wage ceiling.”
The stories circulating on social media range from frustrating to alarming. Michael Mohan, co-creator of the Netflix series Everything sucks! Next to Ben York Jones, It appeared on Twitter on Wednesday. He said they were both “stealing food from the Netflix cafe to feed our families.”
As Mohan explains, he and York Jones “had to write for free for months and couldn’t get any other work.” Everything sucks! Not surprisingly, he believes the WGA’s demands are “1000% reasonable”.
Not everyone seems to sympathize with the pleas of these workers. Look at any author’s Twitter post or any post about the strike, and you’ll likely find dissenters questioning their abilities or the prestige of their output. But take it from a two-time Emmy winner: It’s not that simple.
Ashley Nicole Black and her fellow writers on TBS’ late night series Full Front with Samantha Bee was nominated for seven Emmys and won two. On Wednesday, she dismissed the notion that writers struggling to make ends meet simply aren’t working on “hit shows.”
“Lol, funny story, writing hits doesn’t make you any more money!” Black Wrote. “This is a big part of the problem!”
Before streaming, Black noted, you can write a hit series and make money not only on its initial release, but also on the backend when the studio inevitably sells the series to other networks for re-release in syndication. (Shows Friends Nick got hurt on Nite and how we were able to catch episodes of some of us who didn’t grow up with HBO. Sex and the City some afternoons on TBS.)
“But now if you write a hit for one network, they don’t sell it to another network, they sell it to their own publisher,” Black wrote Wednesday. “Or if you’ve written for a publisher, they won’t sell it anywhere. So even if it’s a big hit, they determine the value and then send you a check for $1.25.”
“So the remains no longer exist,” Black has been finalized. “When you add this to falling wages at all levels, smaller writers’ rooms, and shorter working hours, writers are squeezed from every angle, and people don’t have enough savings to live between seasons of (or even hit) shows.”
Black added that all this puts aside the fact that writers need to be able to earn a living wage, no matter how popular their shows are.
Multiple Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Matt Hubbard has written series including: 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, And super store, wrote on Twitter He said (via an unverified account) that he “enjoyedly” voted to allow a strike, “because I wrote it 20 years ago in one of the worst sitcoms of all time, and I STILL get remnants of it.”
Hubbard did not specify the show, but is credited as the writer on six episodes of the series. Friends spin off joey. “This new generation of writers deserves the same compensation I got for my total screw ups,” he added.
Right. After all, how can we expect our TV and film writers to produce interesting, truly challenging work if they can’t afford a misfire?
Alex Blagg, co-creator and executive producer of the Emmy-winning night show @midnight and also won a daytime Emmy while writing for the Netflix series junk, repeated the feelings of others.
“I’m voting YES for the WGA strike mandate because even though I’ve produced the series, won Emmys, been Blacklisted, sold two feature films, and been on television for 8 consecutive years, I still don’t get it. Learning how to make a steady living as a writer,” Blagg Tuesday wrote, He added that “it’s time to pay us our value.”
Most of the stories circulating on the internet are based on this theme: writers are tired of watching their wages drop and having to fight the studios they allegedly try to do it. short change to them. Writer Alanna Bennett, who has worked on series, including The CWs Roswell, New Mexico reboot and upcoming To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before spin-off series XO, Kitty, He wrote on Twitter on Tuesday “the current system is unsustainable”.
“I’ve been in 3 writers’ rooms in the last 3 years, selected 2 pilots, sold a studio movie, wrote, rewrote, polished and more,” Bennett wrote. “None of that stopped me from going to EBT for a while.”
Now, Bennett added“I am working on adapting a hit book into a starred feature film. I have an action movie pitch for a production company. I’m doing some shopping. And I’m still broke.
“Every writer I know is terrified of a strike” Bennett added. “Why? Because we’re ALL ALREADY HARMFUL. But that’s not what we have. That’s the system we’re fighting against. It’s a system that spends $30 million in executive bonuses and doesn’t pay the show producers enough to buy Teslas but make a living.”
Pay disparities between creatives and executives in Hollywood have proven to be another major theme among writers’ concerns. (And remember: if writers aren’t getting a living wage, what does it mean for the writer to be paid even less for all his assistants and support workers, whose career ladder has been nearly wiped out due to structural changes in the industry?)
In a particularly meaningful tweet, The other two by Gilli Nissim Wrote (from an unverified account) voted to allow a potential strike “for many reasons, but mainly because my sister was paid over $300,000 in a streamer to PLAN the shows my colleagues CREATED.”
Last Week Tonight writer Johnathan Appel made the same point in a slightly different way in his own thinking. chirp Wednesday. In his own words, “Writing is the backbone of the entire industry. We deserve stable incomes and careers. Also, Warner Discovery’s CEO received 39.3 million for the idea to ‘rename the streaming service’ and ‘remake Harry Potter and LOTR’.”