2023-04-24 09:14:20
American screenwriters are threatening to go on strike from next Monday. A disaster soap opera in perspective for the film and television industry.
When the screenwriters lay down their pen, all of Hollywood is paralyzed. Without the stories they are paid to write, there are no movies, no series and no TV shows. Major live shows on US channels will be the first to suffer if the threat is carried out. They will be forced to suspend their program or to improvise… for lack of projections, repartee of geniuses meticulously prepared by these invisible audiovisual production. Hollywood would then be deprived of its engine, and that comes at a high price. The last major writers’ strike dates back to 2007, it lasted 100 days and cost the city of Los Angeles 4 billion 500 million dollars, in present value.
The writers had secured copyright payment for the video on demand
Today, it is streaming that poses a problem for them.Television channels pay them royalties each time they broadcast or rebroadcast a film or series they have written. This is not the case with platforms. They remunerate screenwriters with fixed fees, but do not publish their attendance figures, so it is impossible for them to demand royalties proportional to the success of their fictions. Social conflicts in the cinema reflect the evolution of this industry. The explosion of streaming platforms has completely upset it and those who feel wronged, the screenwriters are now claiming their due.
The profession attracts more and more and yet it is less and less remunerative
There are now three times as many screenwriters in Los Angeles as there were in 2007. About 9,000 took part in the vote organized by their single union, the WGA, the Guild of American Writers, they were only 3,800 during the previous big strike fifteen years ago. They are more numerous because the platforms produce fictions in spades and it takes raw material, stories, to make them. This a priori should have, could have benefited the scriptwriters. In fact, they suffer from it. They always have to invent more stories, but they are paid less – among other things – because streaming series have fewer episodes. For ten years, their income has at best stagnated or even dropped for some, forced to work ever more to maintain their purchasing power.
Are they likely to be heard before May Day?
The studios suffered from the absence of production during the Covid; some of them have already laid off staff, others are about to do so. Because of this bad patch, they say they are struggling to meet their demands. The platforms were the big winners of the confinement, but since the end of the pandemic their stock market value has deflated, they too pretend not to have the means to increase the screenwriters. Crocodile tears that leave marble the main stakeholders, the poor parents of the film industry, more determined than ever. The union raised 20 million dollars, to be distributed in the form of a loan or bursaries, to support future strikers. Before the fateful date, no information filters on possible negotiations, on the other hand the whole industry is preparing for the worst. Studios and platforms have stored up stocks of scripts tied up and their authors protect themselves by signing contracts as quickly as possible to secure what can be secured.
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