Hollywood writers strike after studios fail to negotiate low pay, AI use
The Writers Guild of America, which represents thousands of TV and movie writers, is on strike after six weeks of failed negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Negotiations ended Monday night without an agreement before WGA leadership made the call to strike. Earlier in April, 97.8% of WGA members voted yes in a strike authorization vote.
Without writers, production will likely halt on in-development TV and movies. Nighttime talk shows like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! will go offline without writers. Deadline reported re-runs will be played in lieu of new episodes.
The companies represented by AMPTP — Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount, and Sony — have “created a gig economy inside a union workforce,” WGA said in a news release. “They have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”
WGA released a document outlining its proposals and AMPTP’s responses regarding an increase in pay and residuals, stable writers rooms, improved health coverage, and regulation on the use of artificial intelligence. Tentative agreements were reached on several proposals, but AMPTP rejected others and refused to counter on a number of key items, like weekly pay, preserving writers rooms, viewership-based streaming residuals, and AI regulation, according to the WGA.
You can read the full document below.
“We have proposals that would prevent the studios from eliminating the writers room; they refused to discuss them,” comedian Adam Conover wrote on Twitter. “We have
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