Is a Hollywood writers' strike imminent?

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I guess this makes sense if we don't consider what either of these things actually mean.
MovieBuffering isn't very good at articulating their issues with quote-unquote lefty politics in Hollywood. I saw them call Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 anti-socialism despite the fact that the villain is the one trying to create a strict social hierarchy while the heroes basically live in a commune.
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MovieBuffering isn't very good at articulating their issues with quote-unquote lefty politics in Hollywood. I saw them call Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 anti-socialism despite the fact that the villain is the one trying to create a strict social hierarchy while the heroes basically live in a commune.

It's almost like this is what happens when people use words as one size fits all boogeymen and not things that have actual definitions.



I'm surprised nobody started an actors strike thread, or even mentioned it as far as I am able to see.

Following the cues from the writers strike the actors guilds are following suit, threatening to strike if they dont get more pay. The industry wont budge and will not prevent such a strike.

Neither strike will affect me much and personally I dont give a damn, but since this topic is relevant here on Movie Forums, its a wonder its yet to be brought up.
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I've never heard of these "writers" ever being quoted, while even young people can quote a ton of great writers from our past. Maybe these "writers" should study them before expecting a penny more than the median income.



The casting couch. Nepotism. Diversity of everything (except thoughts/ideas).



Complaining about the quality of writing in modern filmmaking, and acting like it's the writers who are most responsible, and not the producers and studios who are greenlighting and commissioning these terrible scripts, is to fall directly into the hands of those who are destroying creativity, experimentation and risk taking in films.


But I guess we should just let the people who are actually the problem, and who are also the ones who are reaping all the financial rewards of the industry, continue to do as they always have. Paying everyone else but themselves shit. Pretending they are the ones who matter in the creation of art. That everyone else can be replaced.


This isn't actually the fault of writers and it's absurd to expect better movies before they 'earn their salary'. People really need to get hip to what the real problem is.

But they wont.

As always, it's the creative element that gets treated as disposable, while all the ****ing useless **** in executive positions, who keep making terrible decisions, and lining their pockets and laughing at all of us for being big stupid dupes, get off Scott free.


Where is that facepalm emoji?



AI Bruce Willis is one of the bad guys theyre fighting against. Real Bruce Willis will fight him one on one, picket sign vs picket sign. The winner will determine the future of Hollywood.



Due to the Actor's strike, a film I was really looking forward to seeing, Clint Eastwood's "Juror #2", has had to stop production. I am really sad about this. I hate that this is happening. I wanted to know from those of you who may be more knowledgeable about this than I am, what is the risk to the film? How likely is it that this film will not continue after the strike is over? Is Warner Bros., his home studio, obligated legally to finish the production, or can the CEO at Warners decide to cancel it due to the strike and likely higher production costs caused by the delay due to the strike? Also, what about the actors and crew? Are they obligated legally to finish the film, or if they decide to commit to another project in the interim between when the strike ends and the filming begins again, is there a risk that the cast, for example, will no longer be available to finish the film when production resumes? Eastwood is 93, so I'm also worried about his health taking a turn for the worse during any delay, but that is something that is beyond the scope of the questions that I'm asking. It's been filming for about three weeks and I think it was projected to be a 2 month shoot, so how would that factor in to whether or not a decision is made to finish? @HoldenPike, and other knowledgeable MOFOs? Thanks for your thoughts!



Following up on this. Does nobody know the answer to these questions? I'm confident other films may also be in this situation, so this could apply to other productions as well, and learning more about this is interesting to me.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
From my side of things.

I work at a place that rents film gear for productions shot around Toronto. This strike is affecting more than just actors and writers.

We have several productions on the go at once...all but 2 have shut down. Those two are a new Star Trek show gearing up for the fall and a new Law & Order: Toronto. So Law & Order can continue shooting because it is an all-Canadian production. Canadian writers and actors, etc.

Star Trek is rigging all their studios up right now. Once the rigging is done....they basically have to stop. They are hoping this will end once they get to the end of their rigging stage, but who knows?

We have smaller indie stuff going out, but not enough to bring in the money. This was anticipated and the company I work for has laid off 85% of the staff. So in my department, which I run, we went from a team of 6 people, down to 2. Our lighting dept went down to 2, our repair department went down to 2, and our grip department went down to just one guy. So it's kind of weird because it is REALLY DEAD in the place, but with these two shows still rigging and gearing up, at least for me, it seems busy still. Probably because the workforce is just two of us.

So my concern is that the laid-off people might not bother coming back. They've been since the actors announced their strike. So more than a month. They are on unemployment, which the government gives them a percentage of their previous wage earnings, up to $600 a week. Can they survive on that? Living in Toronto, with the crappy Canadian living crisis? No. So they will eventually, if they haven't already get new jobs. Maybe some will come back when this all eventually blows over, but more likely, a bunch of them will not bother to return.

The studios will want to get things running quickly and we'll be bombarded with new lists to pull for these shows and a dwindled workforce or an entirely new team of people (that will take a long time too!!!).

I support the writers, I support the actors. But the crew people, the rental houses, and even post-production houses are indeed suffering from this. I hope an agreement comes quickly. One show is basically helping me keep my job.

From what I hear, Netflix is the main hold-out. They seem to be making money off this strike. Not having to pay for any American productions right now, they are thriving from the constant subscription model they have. The other studios do not have that luxury. They can always rely on their "Squid Game" type shows to keep subscribers from leaving. They have a big foreign market that other studios, again, do not.

Even in Canada, we are feeling this.
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I am fully supportive of the strikes. The current business model just doesn't work in the streaming era and is unsustainable, so the writers and actors have some very legitimate concerns, which prior to the strike, had not been taken seriously by the studios. On the other hand, and this may be an unpopular opinion here, in order to resolve the strikes, I think there need to be concessions to reach a reasonable compromise. The studios appear to have made multiple attempts to both meet with WGA, in addition to submitting a proposal, to make progress, but a counter proposal has not been submitted, to my knowledge, and the union representing the strikers has done nothing but criticize the studio offers and attempts. I understand and appreciate that not all issues were satisfactorily addressed by the studio proposal, but as an outsider to this, that doesn't seem to me like a successful formula to get to a resolution here, which there needs to be for both the viability of the studios as well as the actors and writers. Not only has there not been a concession, but the WGA actually has added additional criteria to resolve the strikes related to additional insurance. Typically, during a negotiation, you do not add additional requirements, and you make efforts to submit counter proposals, and you don't relentlessly attack your partner in negotiations during the negotiations process after they submit a proposal. I am concerned about the approach the union is taking here to resolving the very legitimate issues that they have that led to the strike, especially given the studios have much more financial resources to weather the impact of a strike than the writers and actors who are often living paycheck to paycheck. I acknowledge that the studios have not always acted in good faith, especially before the strike, but in order to move forward, there need to be concessions on the part of the unions, in my opinion. What does everyone else think? Do others agree with me, or are you seeing this differently, and why?



The way I see it is the topics addressed in the strike negotiation are more of an outline of things you can do to cheat the showbiz system rather than true preventative measures. For a writer AI is like a magic genie lamp. Imagine all the writers on a show secretly hiding their genie lamps from each other as they fight for top billing on a shows credits. Sort of like poker I guess, except everyone has a royal flush all the time every time. Real writers can't compete because they can be copied immediately and replaced with a new and improved clone.



Going back to the topic at hand, I hadn’t realized just how much streaming services has impacted the salaries of writers of TV series, and the fear of AI creating scripts. (Darn you Skynet!)

So, many months later and the studios settling with the WGA, all the news reporting seems oriented around TV shows. Mainly both the lack of residuals due to syndication not really being a thing in streaming and the whole idea how writers used to be a dedicated resource for a show (e.g. they'd sometimes be on set, and would be there for rewrites. Also TV series used to be 24-26 episodes a season. Now they deliver a script for 10-12 episodes and then need to find another show to work on).


I wasn't following this thread, but I wonder in what ways the streaming model has impacted writers for movies. I guess the residuals has a somewhat direct analogy, if a studio keeps a movie exclusively on their streaming platform, then I guess there weren't royalties being generated for residuals for the writer, but that seems like that must have become relevant only in the last fee years, particularly with Disney+ (what's WB's streaming service? Other studios presumably didn't have a vertical pipeline, so I'd have assumed they made streaming services pay for showing their movies. But I could be wrong there). Made for Netflix movies, obviously would have been impacted by it.


For the shorter seasons for streaming series, I see no direct analogy for movies.


The fear of AI obviously common to both.



Also hearing The Washington Post cover the resolution of the writer's strike (we've still got the actor's strike going, ftr, so things haven't resumed yet), there was speculation the results may result in, basically, they're just going to recreate cable hypothesis.


Streaming services are going to cost more.


There will be fewer shows (upside. more effort will be put into each show, so the quality may improve. Not being a TV-series watcher, this feels less relevant to me).


Services may try start getting themselves bundles together.


But yeah, the coverage I heard seemed heavily oriented towards TV/web series.