Hollywood lives in turbulent times. He Guild of Writers of America (WGA for its acronym in English) has been on strike since Monday, which will no doubt bring unfortunate consequences for the country’s major audiovisual producers.
Writers are able to move needles because 11,500 of them are represented by WGA East and WGA West. Without screenwriters there are no jokes, monologues disappear, series don’t progress as they should, films don’t start being produced directly.
For the reasons mentioned above, Hollywood will experience delays just like in 2007, the year of the last big strike. That outage lasted 100 days and cost the entertainment industry $2,000 million.
The strike that began on Monday is the first protest hollywood of writers in 15 years. The “camp” opposite the WGA, the one the guild argues with, is THE Alliance of film and television producers (AMPTP).
The union’s main claim has to do with the low pay of screenwriters on jobs for productions of stream. Screenwriters denounce that there is always more money to make series, but less work and money for them.
Writers complain that for a long time, smaller groups of writers have been hired to work on a project and that they, moreover, do it for shorter periods.
“In this negotiation, the survival of writing as a profession is at stake,” said WGA executives who staged pickets in New York and Los Angeles on Tuesday.
The union’s talks with the studios were interrupted because the solution they provided was not considered sufficient. The AMPTP said in a statement that its offer included “generous increases in writers’ pay”, but an agreement could not yet be reached.
In 2019-2020, according to Variety, the weekly minimum for a staff writer on a TV series was $4,546. They work 29 weeks on a TV show for nearly 132,000 a year or an average of 20 weeks on platforms stream for about 91,000.
Programs that will be affected
The strike will begin to be felt sooner than elsewhere in the gradual “disappearance” of talk show. cycles like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Last Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! AND Late Night with Seth Meyers they will gradually begin to show repetitions, and will do so until the situation has calmed down.
As for the series, Cobra Kai AND yellow jacketsrespectively of Netflix and Paramount Plus, are two works whose producers have already announced that their new seasons will be postponed.
Something similar would happen with new episodes of Abbott Elementarya series available on Star+, which would be suspended after the declaration of the strike.
How long will these projects last? If the same thing happens as with the last hit, the late night shows they could be back in the air after a few two months. As for the series, everything is uncertainty.
some background
After the strike at the end of 2007, highly regarded series such as lost, gossip Girl, breaking Bad AND Heroes they have released shorter seasons with rushed endings.
From this decision we can highlight the continuity of Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad. The character played by Aaron Paul He was about to leave at the end of the first season, but because there was a writers’ strike and the broadcast was cut off, his character remained.
On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that at the time, Kimmel was paying his staff out of pocket until he had to get back on the air after using up nearly all of his life savings.
David Lettermanfor example, who was also a producer, made a special deal with the union so that his writers could return to the ring.
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.