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Tag: 2023 writers strike

  • Done Deal: Here Is What’s in the New WGA Contract and What It Means

    Done Deal: Here Is What’s in the New WGA Contract and What It Means

    After 148 days on strike, Hollywood writers are returning to work. The Writers Guild of America set the end to its work stoppage for midnight tonight, meaning scribes can resume pitching ideas, selling scripts, and reconvening in writers rooms as soon as Wednesday.

    The second-longest writers strike in Hollywood history began May 2 and ended after a marathon five-day negotiation session that included participation from top studio leaders including Bob Iger and Ted Sarandos. The guild has released details of its tentative agreement with Hollywood studios and streamers and will now give its 11,500 members until October 9 to vote on whether they want to ratify the contract.

    The leadership of both branches of the WGA voted unanimously to recommend the new three-year contract, which is likely to win approval. In an email to members on Sunday night, the WGA Negotiating Committee called the deal “exceptional” and pointed to “meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership.” Writers won concessions in several key areas, including establishing viewership-based streaming bonuses and rules around the use of artificial intelligence. But they also had to make some compromises, including accepting smaller salary minimum raises. “It was a give and take on both sides,” says a source with knowledge of the deal.

    Since the beginning of the strike, writers have been asking for more transparency about viewership for their shows on streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, and for bonus payments when their shows perform well. As part of the deal, companies that operate a streaming service will provide the WGA with the total number of hours viewed, both domestically and internationally, of original streaming series. And beginning next year, the companies will pay a bonus on any made-for-streaming show or movie that is viewed by at least 20% of a streaming service’s domestic subscriber base in the first 90 days of release.

    On the issue of artificial intelligence, the two sides agree that AI can’t write or rewrite a script, and AI-generated material will not be considered source material. Further, a writer can choose to use AI with company approval, but a company cannot require that a writer use AI software. The studios retained the ability to train AI using film and TV scripts, but gave writers the right to challenge that use in the future.

    The WGA and AMPTP also reached an agreement on establishing minimum staffing for writers rooms, which became a hot-button issue during the strike, particularly for less established writers who were worried that the increasing use of shorter, smaller rooms known as mini-rooms would limit job opportunities. (Conversely, some showrunners and other upper-level writers worried that writer-room minimums would mean that they’d have to hire junior writers at the expense of more seasoned contributors.) Under the new contract, the number of writers will increase in proportion to a show’s number of episodes—unless a single writer is hired to write all episodes. For example, a six-episode show that has been greenlit would require at least three writers, while a 10-episode show would need at least five.

    “This is the biggest contract we’ve won in decades,” says comedian and WGA board member Adam Conover, who also serves on the guild’s negotiating committee. “It’s also precedent-setting. We won terms that we are going to improve every three years, for instance with the success-based streaming residual.” The WGA estimates that the deal is worth $233 million annually, nearly three times the value of the AMPTP’s original proposal.

    With writers returning to work, Hollywood will scramble to restart productions that had been shelved for nearly five months. There’s likely to be an influx of scripts that writers and their agents have been waiting to pitch. And writers rooms that had been shut down—or never even convened—will soon start up with the hopes of getting scripts done before the end of the year. The actors are still on strike, but many people in the industry are hoping that the WGA deal will lead to a quick resolution of that work stoppage as well. Soundstages are already booking up in preparation.

    Natalie Jarvey

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  • We Have a Deal! Writers Strike Poised to End as WGA and Studios Reach a Tentative Agreement

    We Have a Deal! Writers Strike Poised to End as WGA and Studios Reach a Tentative Agreement

    It took 146 days and multiple marathon negotiating sessions attended by CEOs including Bob Iger and David Zaslav, but the Hollywood writers strike appears poised to end. On Sunday night, the Writers Guild of America said it had reached a tentative deal for a new contract, signaling that writers could soon pack up their picket signs and return to work after a nearly five-month walkout. 

    In an email to members, the WGA negotiating committee said they are still working to draft final contract language and that they would send more details soon. “We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional—with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” it reads. Once the contract is finalized, the negotiating committee will vote on whether to send it on to WGA leadership for approval. Then the guild’s more than 11,000 members will be asked to vote to ratify the deal.

    Writers called their first strike in over a decade after walking away from contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on May 1. The guild framed the strike as the answer to an existential crisis facing writers, who had watched as streaming eroded the working conditions and pay structures that once propped up the industry. “The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA said in a statement announcing the work stoppage.

    The strike, which began the next day, sent the industry into a tailspin. Late night shows like The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live immediately halted production; writers rooms for popular TV shows including Abbott Elementary and Yellowjackets disbanded; the screenwriter on Marvel’s upcoming Blade reboot stopped sending in drafts.

    In mid-July, more than 160,000 actors and performers joined writers on the picket lines when their guild, SAG-AFTRA, also declared a strike. The first double strike in more than 60 years brought Hollywood to its knees, effectively ending all production that had continued during the writers work stoppage. Because of the labor action, the Television Academy postponed the Emmys, the studios moved release dates for high-profile movies including Dune: Part Two, and the broadcast networks stocked their fall TV schedules with reality shows, football, and reruns.

    After a 92-day stalemate, the WGA and AMPTP resumed negotiations in August, but made little progress. A counteroffer from the AMPTP included concessions on some key issues, including AI protections, but the WGA said those weren’t “nearly enough.” Top CEOs attempted to meet with members of the guild, but the face-to-face didn’t go well either—and after the AMPTP publicly released its counteroffer, talks stalled.

    Many industry insiders hoped to find a resolution to the strikes before Labor Day, a symbolic nadir in the ongoing fight because it’s when many top executives and creatives return from the Hamptons or the Mediterranean and expect to dig back into work. But the holiday weekend came and went without a deal.

    The start of fall has brought with it a renewed determination on both sides to stop the strike. On Wednesday, September 20, the WGA and AMPTP met for the first time in nearly a month. Notably, sources tell Vanity Fair that leaders from four of the major studios were present for the meeting, a rarity during labor bargaining sessions. The leaders—Iger, Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, and NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman Donna Langley—participated in a marathon sit-down with the hope of hammering out a workable deal, returning Thursday and Friday to continue negotiating. Ahead of the meeting, a studio-side source expressed optimism about reaching an agreement. “People are feeling the economic pressure and the realities of how long this has gone on. It’s impacting everyone, from the biggest corporations to the hairstylists to the restaurants. There’s a shared desire to get back to work,” the source added.

    WGA members showed up in droves to the picket lines on Friday after a Thursday evening email from guild leaders thanked them for “all the messages of solidarity and support we have received the last few days” and requested “as many of you as possible to come out to the picket lines tomorrow.” Strike captains extended picketing outside many studios on Friday. The day ended without a deal, but negotiators agreed to meet again on Saturday and Sunday.

    Reaching a deal is the hardest step in these negotiations, but the strike isn’t over quite yet. Though the WGA is suspending picketing—and encouraging writers to support SAG-AFTRA on the picket lines—the negotiating committee wrote in its member email, “No one is to return to work until specifically authorized to by the Guild.”

    The WGA must now finalize its contract. As soon as Tuesday, the leadership groups at both the East and West branches of the WGA will then vote to send the contract to members for ratification. At that time, leadership will also vote on whether to allow writers to return to work while the official ratification is pending. But even if the writers strike ends this week, Hollywood won’t be back to business as usual until the AMPTP hammers out a deal with SAG-AFTRA.

    Natalie Jarvey

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  • Drew Barrymore Apologizes to Writers, but Will Resume Her Show Anyway

    Drew Barrymore Apologizes to Writers, but Will Resume Her Show Anyway

    After defending her daytime talk show’s return amid the ongoing writers strike on Sunday, Drew Barrymore put a face to her show’s decision in a video apology posted to Instagram on Friday. 

    “I believe there’s nothing I can do or say in this moment to make it okay,” the host began, noting that her choice to resume The Drew Barrymore Show “wasn’t a PR-protected situation” and that she was taking “full responsibility” for the call. “There are so many reasons why this is so complex, and I just want everyone to know my intentions have never been in a place to upset or hurt anyone. It’s not who I am,” Barrymore added. “I’ve been through so many ups and downs in my life, and this is one of them.”

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    Earlier this week, there was swift backlash to the announcement that her talk show would return despite both the WGA and SAG strikes, though Barrymore is not alone: Other daytime TV shows, including The Talk, The Jennifer Hudson Show, and Sherri, are also resuming production, as is Bill Maher’s HBO late-night series, Real Time. The WGA announced that it would picket the Monday and Tuesday tapings of Barrymore’s program, as it is “a WGA-covered, struck show that is planning to return without its writers.” SAG-AFTRA released a statement clarifying that Barrymore wasn’t in violation of its strike, saying that her return to The Drew Barrymore Show “is permissible work” and that “Drew’s role as host does not violate the current strike rules.” Barrymore, who bowed out of hosting May’s MTV Movie & TV Awards due to the WGA strike’s start, was subsequently dropped as host of the National Book Awards ceremony.

    Chelsea White, Cristina Kinon, and Liz Koe, the three head writers on The Drew Barrymore Show, joined the WGA’s protests on Monday and Tuesday, as reported by Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter. White told the former outlet that she learned of the show’s return via an Instagram post and was “disappointed” by the move. “When any production that is covered under WGA comes back during a strike, it undermines our whole group effort to come to a fair contract with the AMPTP,” she said.

    “I deeply apologize to writers. I deeply apologize to unions. I deeply apologize,” Barrymore said in her Instagram video. “I don’t exactly know what to say because sometimes, when things are so tough, it’s hard to make decisions from that place.” She reiterated that it was her decision to resume the show, which reportedly forced all audience members to take off their WGA pins upon entry to the studio’s building due to safety concerns. “The pins set off the metal detectors at CBS Broadcast Center security,” said a spokesperson for The Drew Barrymore Show. “Audience members were asked to remove them and then offered them back after they cleared the metal detectors.”

    Savannah Walsh

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  • Bill Maher Becomes First Host to Make Late-Night Return Without Writers

    Bill Maher Becomes First Host to Make Late-Night Return Without Writers

    Bill Maher is going “off-the-cuff” when his late-night series Real Time with Bill Maher returns to HBO amid the ongoing writers’ strike, the host announced on Wednesday via social media.

    “Real Time is coming back, unfortunately, sans writers or writing,” Maher wrote in a statement that makes him the first late-night host to return to the desk since shows went dark on May 2 as the WGA started its strike. “It has been five months, and it is time to bring people back to work. The writers have important issues that I sympathize with, and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction, but they are not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns,” he continued.

    Maher, whose show will return Sept. 22, according to Deadline, said that despite some aid from his own pocket, “much of the staff is struggling mightily. We all were hopeful this would come to an end after Labor Day, but that day has come and gone, and there still seems to be nothing happening. I love my writers, I am one of them, but I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much.”

    The host’s hiatus hobbies have included hating on the Barbie movie and criticizing the goals and timing of the WGA’s strike. “What I find objectionable about the philosophy of the strike [is] it seems to be, they have really morphed a long way from 2007’s strike, where they kind of believe that you’re owed a living as a writer, and you’re not,” Maher said on his “Club Random” podcast with guest Jim Gaffigan last week. “They struck at just the wrong time; they have no leverage. Has anyone who is watching TV recently noticed a difference? Has it affected the person down the pipeline? I don’t think so. I haven’t noticed a difference.”

    But in announcing his late-night reinstatement, Maher insisted he’d “honor the spirit of the strike by not doing a monologue, desk piece, ‘New Rules’ or editorial, the written pieces that I am so proud of on Real Time.” While “the show I will be doing without my writers will not be as good as our normal show, full stop,” Maher continued, “the heart of the show is an off-the-cuff panel discussion that aims to cut through the bullshit and predictable partisanship, and that will continue. The show will not disappoint.”

    The Writers Guild of America West, of which Maher is a member, called his decision “disappointing” on social media. “If he goes forward with his plan, he needs to honor more than ‘the spirit of the strike,’” the organization said in a follow-up tweet. The WGA also confirmed it “will be picketing this show,” adding, “it is difficult to imagine how @RealTimers can go forward without a violation of WGA strike rules taking place.” Other writers called Maher out directly, including Stephen King, who reposted the host’s statement and wrote, “This is exactly how strikes are broken.”

    Maher’s move comes amidst controversial daytime TV returns for The Talk, The Jennifer Hudson Show, Sherri, and The Drew Barrymore Show. After Drew Barrymore confirmed that her talk show would return despite both the WGA and SAG strikes earlier this week, the WGA announced that it would picket the Monday and Tuesday tapings of her series as it is “a WGA-covered, struck show that is planning to return without its writers.” Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA released a statement clarifying that Barrymore wasn’t in violation of its strike, saying that her return to The Drew Barrymore Show “is permissible work” and that “Drew’s role as host does not violate the current strike rules.” But the fallout continued—Barrymore was subsequently dropped as host of the National Book Awards ceremony.

    With no end to the strike in sight, other prominent late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver have launched their own podcast, Strike Force Five, the proceeds from which are being promised to out-of-work late-night TV staffers.

    The most recent episode of Real Time aired on April 28 and featured guest Elon Musk. Shortly after Maher announced his show’s return on X (formerly Twitter), Musk offered up the site as a space for Maher’s content. “Maybe worth posting some material on this platform,” the CEO replied. “The reach is enormous.”

    Savannah Walsh

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  • Strikes Saved Warner Bros. Discovery “More Than $100 Million,” Says CEO David Zaslav

    Strikes Saved Warner Bros. Discovery “More Than $100 Million,” Says CEO David Zaslav

    The joint Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes have bred economic instability for several facets of the industry—from movie theaters bracing for an uncertain release schedule to creatives just trying to survive. But that financial strain doesn’t appear to be hitting the studios. Weeks after Netflix told investors that it had saved $1.5 billion this year by pausing productions, CEO David Zaslav has declared that Warner Bros. Discovery has savings in the “low $100 million range.”

    That’s according to the company’s Q2 earnings call Thursday, where Warner Bros. Discovery leadership broke down the numbers for April 1–June 30, a period when only the writers were on strike. This figure comes just before WGA leadership returns to the negotiating table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

    Although there is no such meeting in place between the studios and actors, WBD said it’s currently estimating “early September” as the end of striking. That’s far earlier than the six-month projection recently provided by SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher. 

    “We’re in the business of storytelling. Our goal is to tell great stories, stories with the power to entertain and, when we’re at our best, inspire with stories that come to life on screens big and small,” Zaslav said on the call, as reported by Variety. “We cannot do any of that without the entirety of the creative community, the great creative community. Without the writers, directors, editors, producers, actors, the whole below-the-line crew. Our job is to enable and empower them to do their best work. We’re hopeful that all sides will get back to the negotiating room soon and that these strikes get resolved in a way that the writers and actors feel they are fairly compensated and their efforts and contributions are fully valued.”

    During the call, Zaslav—who was booed and told to “pay your writers” while giving a commencement address at Boston University weeks into the writers strike—continued: “I think all of us in this business are very keen to figure out a solution as quickly as possible. We are in some uncharted waters, in terms of the world as it is today and measuring it all. And so I think, in good faith, we all got to fight to get this resolved. And it needs to be resolved in a way that the creative community feels fairly compensated and fully valued.”

    Savannah Walsh

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  • Is This The Beginning of The End of The Writers Strike?

    Is This The Beginning of The End of The Writers Strike?

    It took 92 days, but the stalemate between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood’s biggest studios and streamers has come to an end. On Tuesday, Carol Lombardini, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, reached out to WGA leadership to request a meeting to discuss restarting contract negotiations, which have been on pause since writers decided to strike on May 1. They are scheduled to sit down on Friday, the WGA shared with its 11,500 members in an email sent late Tuesday night.

    A meeting between the two at-odds groups doesn’t mean that talks will immediately resume, but it is a clear sign that the ice has thawed after a three-month work stoppage. The WGA said it would share updates with its members after the meeting, cautioning them to be wary of rumors: “Whenever there is important news to share, you will hear it directly from us.” 

    This was going to happen eventually. “They will come back to us,” WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser said in a July 26 video updating members on the strike. But when exactly was up for debate. Predicting when the strike will end has become Hollywood’s favorite parlor game, with guesses ranging from fall to, at their most extreme, early next year. 

    For several weeks, the writers seemed like they would be in this fight alone. In early June, the Directors Guild of America reached a deal that included an increase in foreign residuals and confirmation that AI cannot replace work performed by members. But the July 14 decision by SAG-AFTRA to send its 160,000 actor and performer members out on strike, shutting down nearly all scripted television and film production, has ratcheted up the pressure on the studios to resume negotiations. Though the studios were prepared to weather some production delays, a complete work stoppage that lasts through Labor Day could be catastrophic, threatening the fall TV season, pushing back big-budget movie premieres, and throwing awards season into disarray. (The Emmys, which were scheduled to air Sept. 18, have already been postponed, and fall is when Oscar campaigning kicks into high gear.) 

    Both strikes will need to be resolved in order for Hollywood to get fully back to work, but it might be easier for the AMPTP to reach an agreement with the WGA at this time. While the actors’ fight is still fresh—SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said during a Tuesday morning interview on the Today show that the guild has “financially prepared ourselves for the next six months”—the battle with the writers is creeping closer to the 100-day mark, the point at which the 2007 strike was coming to an end. 

    “We remain committed to finding a path to mutually beneficial deals with both unions,” a spokesman for the AMPTP said in a statement.

    Representatives from the studios met last Friday to discuss finding a path to resume negotiations. But as recently as Tuesday morning, the other WGA negotiating committee co-chair, David Goodman, told Vanity Fair that the guild had not yet received a call from the AMPTP. “We’re ready to go back to the table, we’re ready to end this, but we’ll fight for as long as we have to,” he said. “We’ve got no official outreach yet but we’re ready, whenever they want.” 

    Even if talks do resume soon, they won’t necessarily lead to a quick resolution. The two sides ended talks far apart on several key issues, including how to regulate the use of AI. The writers are also asking for raises and increases in streaming residuals. As Keyser noted recently, “saying no to labor in unison is a lot easier than saying yes.”

    Natalie Jarvey

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  • Hollywood Actors and Writers vs. the Studios: 1933 vs. 2023

    Hollywood Actors and Writers vs. the Studios: 1933 vs. 2023

    Recently, former Paramount head Barry Diller suggested that movie moguls—and Hollywood’s highest paid actors—take 25% pay cuts. The goodwill gesture, by Diller’s reasoning, just might help bridge the gap between the striking writers and actors and the big studios and streamers. When I first heard Diller’s proposal I thought, It’s déjà vu all over again. Few remember that in 1933, the studios actually joined together to mandate that administrators and creators making over $50 a week take a 50% pay cut.

    It didn’t work then and it probably won’t work now.

    There are many reasons the move failed 90 years ago. But the bottom-line difference was that in 1933 writers and actors were not yet unionized. And in retrospect, it is clear that the studios, by imposing those steep cuts, made the writers—followed by the actors and directors—realize that their contracts were worthless without unions. (Screenwriters formed a guild that April; actors did so in July.)

    Yes, there were already cinema organizations aplenty. For years, writers had belonged to clubs and associations. In 1922, a consortium of film companies had created the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA), otherwise known as the Hays Office, to lobby for the industry’s interests and to try and minimize censorship. Then, five years later, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) was formed, in large part to prevent the unionization of the still-burgeoning, if silent, film business. Brought together under one umbrella, the Academy’s five branches—writers, actors, directors, producers, and technicians—served to speed along the process of making sound pictures. (There are 18 branches today.) But by early 1933, a perfect financial storm had swept across Southern California, one that threatened the industry that, along with agriculture, tourism, and oil, was the backbone of the Los Angeles economy.

    The Depression, which began in 1929, had circled the globe and hit Hollywood with a wallop. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in early March of 1933 and closed the country’s banks for a week to get a handle on the economy. Suddenly, fewer and fewer Americans had cash for necessities, let alone movies. (By 1933, audience numbers had dropped to 60 million a week—from a sky-high 110 million in 1929.)

    Filmmaking was a cash-on-the-barrelhead business, so studios turned to Wall Street for financing, eventually welcoming new moneymen and risk-takers who really hadn’t a clue about the movies. It got to the point that by the end of the year, there was not one person on the board of Paramount Pictures with previous experience making films.

    It was the MPPDA, after all, that had come up with the idea to push the salary cut. And Warner Bros., Paramount, and Columbia complied: All three were among the studios that, on March 9, 1933, instituted wage reductions. At the time, MGM alone was operating in the black, thanks in large part to the success of the popular comedies of Canadian actor Marie Dressler. But MGM’s boss, Louis B. Mayer, apparently, only had enough money on hand to cover his staffers’ salaries for a couple of weeks.

    As MGM story editor Samuel Marx later wrote in his book Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints, Mayer, with his beard “stubbled and his eyes red,” entered the largest auditorium on the lot at a pivotal moment in March to address his assembled employees. Mayer promised to keep the salary reductions short-lived and, if necessary, to repay them all out of his own pocket. He feigned tears. His voice caught. Lionel Barrymore and others cheered him on, expressing their support. When Mayer left the room, feeling triumphant, Marx heard him ask the casting chief, Benny Thau, “How did I do?” (Mayer’s crocodile tears moment was recreated in a scene in David Fincher’s 2020 feature, Mank, about the tortured birth of Citizen Kane.)

    Word of Mayer’s cynical comments soon spread. And the film community got mightily riled. They held meetings. They looked to other industries across America in which organized labor was becoming a vital force. In short order, the screenwriter Albert Hackett would credit Mayer with creating, in one fell swoop, “more communists than Karl Marx.” And one long, hard look at their “contracts” proved to the writers, directors, and actors that those pieces of paper offered them no protection. Their only option was to unionize.

    On March 28, 1933, movie scribes Anita Loos, Frances Marion, Jane Murfin, and Bess Meredyth were among the 100 women and men who gathered to sign $100 membership checks made out to the Screen Writers Guild (SWG). A week later, on April 6, those 100, along with scores of compatriots who joined their ranks “by invitation or application,” comprised the newly formed SWG. John Howard Lawson, who had few film credits to his name (but who, 14 years later, would become one of the blacklisted Hollywood 10, was elected the guild’s first president. Frances Marion, the town’s highest paid screenwriter, male or female—and one of its most prolific—was named vice president; producer-screenwriter Ralph Block, treasurer; and Joe Mankiewicz, still in his early 20s, secretary. (When his older brother, Herman, was asked why he didn’t support the guild, he claimed, with his cynical wit, “All the $250-a-week writers I know are making $2,500 a week.”)

    Cari Beauchamp

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  • Hollywood Strikes Can’t Keep Netflix Down

    Hollywood Strikes Can’t Keep Netflix Down

    Since early May, writers have been picketing outside Netflix’s Hollywood offices as they fight for updates to their contracts with the entertainment industry’s biggest, and richest, companies. They’ve been refusing to work, disrupting productions, and creating chaos for an industry already reeling from the changes wrought by the rise of streaming. Last week, actors joined them in walking away from their work.

    But turns out it’s hard to keep Netflix down. The streaming giant told investors on Wednesday that all of those paused productions have been helping it save some money, $1.5 billion to be exact. By the end of year, the company is now expected to have $5 billion in free cash flow.

    The strikes don’t seem to have hurt Netflix’s standing with customers, either. The streamer added 5.9 million subscribers during the most recent three-month period, which ended after the writers strike had already been underway for close to two months. Even in the United States and Canada, where the effects of the strike are likely to be felt first, Netflix added nearly 1.2 million subscribers. That’s more new subscribers than it’s had in the region in at least a year.

    Netflix attributed that growth to its recent effort to crack down on password sharing, and to offering customers more price flexibility with the introduction of a cheaper ad-supported plan. Both initiatives were put into place after the company was caught off guard by a sudden slip in momentum during the first part of last year, when it lost subscribers.

    Before writers or actors went on strike, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos predicted that the company would be fine if its content pipeline dried up. “We have a large base of upcoming shows and films from around the world, so we could probably serve our members better than most,” he told investors in April. And yes, the company often has shows stockpiled for months before they air, meaning that customers aren’t likely to feel the effects of the production pause for some time. Netflix also relies heavily on reality programming and documentaries, which aren’t affected by the strike, to round out its scripted library.

    Even when Netflix’s steady flow of new scripted shows turns into a drip, it’s got thousands of hours of licensed movies and television shows that it serves up to its subscribers on demand. (NCIS, anyone?) To pad out that offering, Netflix recently began licensing HBO shows including Insecure and Six Feet Under.

    Still, Sarandos said in a video interview on Wednesday that he “very much hoped to reach an agreement by now.” The son of a union electrician added that he knows striking can take “an enormous toll on your family, financially and emotionally.” He didn’t go into specifics about Netflix’s role in the contract negotiations, but said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do. There are a handful of complicated issues. We’re super committed to getting to an agreement as soon as possible, one that’s equitable and one that enables the industry and everybody in it to move forward into the future.” 

    Sarandos also noted that Netflix produces a wide variety of content, including local-language fare that won’t be impacted by the strike. Still to come this year on the streamer: New seasons of The Crown, Heartstopper, and Virgin River. So content procurement shouldn’t be a problem. Instead, what Netflix needs to worry about most is whether the strikes eventually turn the tide of public opinion. The streamer is already the villain for thousands of picketing writers and actors. And as LA Times columnist Mary McNamara recently wrote, it could eventually become that for the general viewing public too.

    This story has been updated.

    Natalie Jarvey

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  • SAG-AFTRA Strike: Studios’ AI Proposal Sounds Like Black Mirror, Right?

    SAG-AFTRA Strike: Studios’ AI Proposal Sounds Like Black Mirror, Right?

    The world of Black Mirror might feel like a dystopian alternate reality. But Hollywood, it turns out, is a lot closer to becoming an episode of the Netflix anthology series than anyone—except maybe creator Charlie Brooker—could have realized.

    In a press conference announcing SAG-AFTRA’s plans to send its actor members out on strike, the union’s chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, suggested that if they had accepted the Hollywood studio’s proposal around the use of artificial intelligence, actors could have ended up suffering the same fate as Salma Hayek in the Black Mirror episode “Joan is Awful.”

    The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents producers, studios, and streamers, said in a statement that it had offered SAG-AFTRA a “groundbreaking AI proposal which protects performers’ digital likenesses, including a requirement for performer’s consent for the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital alterations of a performance.” But Crabtree-Ireland countered, “in that groundbreaking AI proposal, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want, with no consent and no compensation. If you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”

    Major spoiler alert for Black Mirror season six: in the twisty episode “Joan is Awful,” viewers learn that the actress on a new show on a service called Streamberry is, in fact, an AI-generated digital likeness of Hayek. (There’s a lot more going on too; just watch it.) Brooker recently told Vanity Fair that the prospect of having your likeness used for storytelling “must be terrifying for the next generation of actors coming up. Are you suddenly going to be competing against all the Golden Age actors that have ever been popular?”

    AI has become a hot-button issue for both actors and writers in their contract negotiations with the AMPTP. “AI’s not going anywhere, not with Silicon Valley desperate for the Next Big Thing,” John Lopez, a member of the Writers Guild of America’s AI working group (an internal committee), wrote for VF. “You can’t put handcuffs on the digital monster after it’s left Dr. Frankenstein’s AI lab.” During its negotiations with the studios, the WGA released a statement explaining that it wanted to prevent AI-generated material from being used as source material, or from writing or rewriting scripts. After writers put down their pens and took to the picket lines, WGA said that the AMPTP rejected its proposal, instead offering “annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.”

    “Joan is Awful” plays like a comedy, but Brooker isn’t actually laughing. As he told VF, “it’s quite an existential nightmare.”

    Natalie Jarvey

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  • Ryan Murphy Really, Really Did Not Like That Tweet

    Ryan Murphy Really, Really Did Not Like That Tweet

    The Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike since early May, is apparently in damage-control mode. According to a new report in The Hollywood Reporter, one of the most powerful showrunners in Hollywood, Ryan Murphy, recently threatened litigation against a union strike captain.

    In order to understand what prompted the dust-up, it’s important to know that one of the WGA’s most powerful tools has been its ability to shut down TV shows by picketing productions. If even one person is picketing the entrance to a studio, Teamsters will almost always likely turn away instead of delivering important production equipment. At a time when there are virtually no scripted shows in production, Murphy has three in motion—American Horror Story, American Sports Story, and anthology American Horror Stories—which has made his projects have been a target. (Remember when AHS star Kim Kardashian caught flack for tweeting from the set during a writers strike?)

    Warren Leight, an executive producer on Law & Order: SVU and strike captain for the guild’s East Coast branch, is one of the people leading the rapid response team that’s been targeting productions around the greater New York area. In late June, he tweeted that crewmembers on American Horror Story, which has been filming at Silvercup Studios, told him that they’d be “blackballed in Murphy-land” if they refused to cross the picket lines. A spokesperson for Murphy called the claims “categorically false,” and a lawyer representing him sent a letter to WGA East leadership threatening litigation against Leight, THR reports. Murphy’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

    Leight subsequently deleted the tweet, issued an apology, and reportedly forfeited his leadership roles within the WGA East. Vanity Fair reached out to Leight and a WGA East spokesperson for comment. Now, WGA East has apparently had to remind its leadership that they shouldn’t be going after fellow writers, but rather focusing on fighting the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, with whom they’ve yet to agree on a new contract. “If we turn on each other, the AMPTP wins,” reads the WGA East memo, which THR obtained and published.

    In the same memo, WGA East said it would continue to picket his shows and investigate any leads about members violating strike rules. Murphy’s shows are allowed to remain in production as long as they’re using scripts written before the strike, and Murphy can continue working in his capacity as a producer, but a source close to the Dahmer cocreator says he’s been staying away from set in an effort to adhere to strike protocols.

    Natalie Jarvey

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  • Apocalypse Postponed: Actors and Studios Extend Contract Negotiations

    Apocalypse Postponed: Actors and Studios Extend Contract Negotiations

    Hollywood has at least another week and a half to live. SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents some 160,000 actors and performers, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have not yet agreed on a new deal, but they’re optimistic enough to have extended their contract negotiations until July 12, forestalling the possibility of a strike that would likely be even more debilitating that the ongoing one by Hollywood’s writers.

    The pressure has been mounting for the actors, whose contract with Hollywood’s biggest studios was originally set to expire at midnight on Friday, June 30. The writers, who’ve been picketing for two months, hope the actors will join them in the fight, increasing the pressure on the studios to accept their demands for increases in streaming residuals and protections against an AI incursion. In a video shared with members last week, SAG-AFTRA national president Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland promised that they would achieve “a seminal deal.” But more than 1,000 stars, among them Meryl Streep, Ben Stiller, and Quinta Brunson, signed a letter addressed to leadership that made clear that they’d rather strike than accept a paltry deal. “This is not a moment to meet in the middle, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that the eyes of history are on all of us,” the letter reads. “We ask that you push for all the change we need and protections we deserve and make history doing it.”

    Extending negotiations will give SAG-AFTRA leadership a little more time, regardless of the outcome. It also pushes the deadline beyond the Fourth of July holiday, when Hollywood becomes a ghost town. In a joint statement, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP said that the guild’s television and theatrical contracts will be extended until July 12 at 11:59 p.m. PT. “The parties will continue to negotiate under a mutually agreed upon media blackout,” they wrote.

    The actors have a history of pushing contract negotiations past their deadline. They did so in both 2014 and 2017, and many industry observers predicted a similar outcome this year given that they only had three-and-a-half weeks to hammer out a deal. SAG-AFTRA didn’t start talks with the AMPTP until June 7, after the group that represents studios and producers had already conducted negotiations with the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America. (The directors did not follow the writers to the picket lines, instead ratifying a new contract one week before its previous contract was set to expire.) In a separate letter to members, Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland noted the tight negotiating schedule, explaining that the decision to extend the contract was made “in order to exhaust every opportunity to achieve the righteous contract we all demand and deserve.” But, they added, “no one should mistake this extension for weakness.”

    It’s been more than 40 years since actors last went on strike against the Hollywood studios, and more than 60 since both writers and actors staged work stoppages at the same time. But the current contract negotiations arrive at a flashpoint for the entertainment industry, which has undergone a seismic shift in recent years as streaming services have flooded the market. Though streaming gigs are the most prevalent today, they don’t pay as well as broadcast and cable TV shows, making it harder for working actors to cobble together a sustainable income. “There’s this perception that as actors, we’re all rich Hollywood celebrities, but the majority of SAG does not make insane salaries,” Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt actor Lauren Adams told Vanity Fair earlier this month. “A lot of us are making contract minimums, which in this day and age makes it really hard to have a career.”

    Like the writers, the actors are asking for raises and increased streaming residuals. They are also worried about how AI could threaten their livelihoods, and want there to be more guardrails around self-tape auditions, which proliferated during the pandemic.

    Writers have been effective at causing chaos for Hollywood since their strike began. The late night shows immediately went on pause, and many other television productions were forced to shut down because they didn’t have completed scripts. Some writers are showing up to picket before dawn, a tactic that allows Teamsters (who’ve said they won’t cross picket lines) to drive away without delivering production equipment. The addition of thousands of actors on the picket lines would further juice both guilds’ fights with the studios. Not only will they not show up for work (what’s left of it anyway), they also likely won’t promote upcoming projects. “That’s massive, and it will impact the box office,” actor Matt Bush previously told VF. “There’s a whole ecosystem built around that as well, so there’s a trickle-down effect.”

    Natalie Jarvey

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  • The Writers Strike Is Blowing Up the Upfronts

    The Writers Strike Is Blowing Up the Upfronts

    If you had to pick one reliable highlight from the upfronts each spring, when America’s content conglomerates woo Madison Avenue with the best and brightest from their upcoming television slates, there’s a good chance it would be Jimmy Kimmel’s stand-up routine while emceeing the Disney presentation. In 2019, The New York Times declared, “J​immy Kimmel Saves Disney’s Supersize Upfront,” while last year’s Kimmel monologue made headlines for its R-rated roast of Netflix. “You know, every year I say, ‘Fuck Netflix.’ And this year it came true!” the ABC late-night star cracked, skewering the streamer for its mega-scrutinized subscriber stumble in 2022. “After those smug bastards choked the life out of us for years, it feels really good to see them stoop to selling advertising. Everybody loves Bridgerton. How much do you think they’ll love it when it’s interrupted by a tech commercial every four minutes, you zillion-dollar dicks?” 

    When Disney takes over Manhattan’s North Javits Center on Tuesday for its 2023 upfront, there will be no such side-splitting hijinks. That’s because, to state the obvious, Kimmel won’t be there, a source close to ABC confirmed. (Disney, which owns ABC, didn’t have a comment.) We also confirmed that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers won’t be yucking it up at NBCUniversal’s shindig at Radio City Music Hall. Like other top television talent, the late night hosts will be sitting out this year’s festivities thanks to the two-week-old writers strike, which has already succeeded in throwing a wrench into the television industry’s annual advertising bonanza. (Stephen Colbert, whose show has gone dark just like the others, didn’t have to cancel because CBS parent company Paramount Global had already decided to forego its long-running upfront at Carnegie Hall. And by the way, the late-night hosts are all WGA members themselves.) 

    “Very few actors are gonna show up, very few writers are gonna show up,” a WGA member on the front lines said of the upfronts, which kick off Monday morning. “They’re gonna be dry, and there are gonna be pickets.”

    Once a highlight on the media calendar, the upfronts had already been feeling a little tired lately; after all, what exec wants to get up on stage in front of thousands of ad buyers to tout their exciting fall broadcast lineup when they know all the action is in streaming? Now, after a few years of pandemic-related disruptions, the writers strike has the potential to deal the final blow to this cultural institution. You won’t hear them say this publicly, but privately some of the most important people in the TV business are already whispering that the upfronts aren’t as important as they used to be—and a strike-induced downsizing may only supercharge that discussion.

    Los Angeles is obviously ground zero for strike activity. But there’s been lots of action on the East Coast too. We’re told that the first big New York–based demonstrations at the beginning of the strike brought out between 700 and 1,000 people. This past week, a few hundred strikers and supporters turned out for a rally at HBO, and smaller pickets shut down production of Billions and Daredevil. “We’re doing everything we can to disrupt production,” said the WGA source, adding, “The guild plans to make our presence felt at every upfront.” 

    They got a head start in the first couple days of the strike during the newfronts, the upfronts’ digital-centric little cousin. Bupkis star Edie Falco was supposed to appear onstage at NBCU’s Peacock newfront, but when she learned WGA was going to be picketing the event, she gave one of its members a greenlight to tweet the news that she would be canceling her appearance. “It’s the least I can do,” Falco told him.

    In addition to contending with swarms of placard-wielding screenwriters belting out chants like, “DISNEY, SHOWTIME, HBO, WITHOUT OUR SCRIPTS YOU GOT NO SHOW,” the suits have had to re-jigger their upfront strategies to varying degrees. Sources familiar with the presentations at Disney, NBCU, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox Corporation told us the plan was to lean into news, sports, and reality programming. “We’re all in the same boat,” said an executive at one of the companies. “There’s gonna be a focus on stuff that’s not scripted in terms of what you see on the stage. Everybody seems to be doing a version of that.”

    And then there’s Netflix, the “villain,” in the words of The New York Times, that has “emerged as an avatar for the writers’ complaints.” For its first ever upfront presentation on Wednesday afternoon, the streamer had planned to stage an event at the storied Paris Theater, Manhattan’s only surviving single-screen cinema, which Netflix has operated since 2019. But as of Thursday, the company opted to cancel its in-person showcase in favor of a virtual one. We learned that execs at the streamer were worried about WGA’s plans to picket its first ever upfront; a source familiar with the decision cited the NYPD’s fears over pedestrian safety. “They’re feeling the pressure here,” said Nick Mandernach, a WGA member who’s helping coordinate picketing outside the historic Sunset Bronson Studios in Hollywood where Netflix has set up shop. “Wherever they go, whatever they’re doing, we’ll be there.” 

    In any case, the in-person event would have been a rather understated affair by Netflix standards. The Paris Theater seats just 571 people; in contrast, the Theater at Madison Square Garden, where Warners is set to make its pitch to ad buyers, has room for several thousand. And it appears the virtual Netflix upfront will have even less wattage than what the company was originally planning: our source adds that Netflix has decided not to feature talent during the presentation. 

    Plans for all of the presentations were still in flux as we were wrapping up this story on Friday. But a source familiar with Disney’s upfront said the event will continue as planned, and that it will even have talent in attendance. A second source, however, told us that talent involved in scripted projects have been pulling out of their scheduled appearances. 

    One more thing: in a surprise plot twist befitting a Hollywood script, NBCU suddenly has a bigger headache on its hands than a bunch of angry picketers. On Thursday evening, just three days before the company’s presentation was set to kick off the entire upfronts shebang on Monday morning, news leaked out that NBCU’s head of advertising, Linda Yaccarino—an ad-world fixture known to dazzle the upfronts crowd with her lavish outfits—was in talks with Elon Musk to become Twitter’s CEO. (Sleuthy Twitter people immediately pounced on her apparently MAGA-adjacent bona fides.) On Friday, NBCU confirmed that Yaccarino, the very person who was supposed to lead NBCU’s Radio City showcase, would leave the company immediately, and Musk confirmed her hiring in a subsequent tweet. As Puck’s Matt Belloni put it in the latest edition of his newsletter, “A television company’s head of monetization bailing on the eve of the upfronts? Brutal.”

    Joe Pompeo, Natalie Jarvey

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  • How a Writers Strike Gave Birth to a Real-Life Romance

    How a Writers Strike Gave Birth to a Real-Life Romance

    It’s the perfect premise for a rom-com. Two TV writers looking for love find it in the most unlikely place: on a picket line, striking with their union. That’s exactly what happened to Stacy Traub and Hunter Covington during the 2007 writers strike, but no studio executives have been interested in bringing that scenario to the screen. “Anytime I write something slightly close, they never want my character to be a TV writer,” Traub says with a sigh. “People feel like it’s not relatable. But for me, it’s relatable!” 

    Less than a week into the 2023 writers strike, they’ve invited friends and colleagues to celebrate their 10th anniversary on the exact spot where they met and later got engaged. A number of people gather on a windy corner in front of Fox Studio’s Galaxy Gate, holding up their picket signs to make a tunnel for the couple to run through. Traub wears a white sash with the word “BRIDE” ironically slung across her fuschia blazer. Covington sports a bushy beard, tattoos, and a T-shirt that says, “If my wife can settle, then so can the AMPTP”—referring to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the organization that represents the industry’s studios. 

    The two originally met in the fall of 2007 at a singles-themed picket that Covington organized. He was writing for My Name Is Earl at the time, and egged on by a few fellow singletons, he decided to look for a silver lining in a potentially grueling strike. This was an era before modern-day dating apps, he points out; it was worth a try. His Earl colleague Danielle Sanchez-Witzel brought her friend Traub, who was then the showrunner of a show called Notes From the Underbelly. The mother of an infant and a toddler, Traub had recently gone through a divorce. “Being in a writers room is such a safe space, and if your life is gonna fall apart, it’s kind of a great place for it to happen—you know, I had people around me making me laugh,” she recalls. When the strike hit, she looked to the picket lines for a sense of community. 

    The singles picket was low pressure. “I thought there’s a chance that this [fix-up] could work,” says Sanchez-Witzel. “It would be so, so casual, because we’re always walking in a circle. So we could walk by and say hello, and kind of loop back around.” Afterward they went out together for a meal that cemented their interest. “That was the start of a beautiful union within our beautiful union.”

    Not that their romance ran smooth: There were enough bumps in their relationship to fill a six-episode streaming series. “I had an almost three-year-old and a four-month-old, and he didn’t have kids,” says Traub. “I came with a lot of baggage and he was like, I don’t know if I can handle this. So we broke up.” A year later, though, they found their way back to each other, began dating and had a child together. In 2012, Covington came home one night suggesting that they head to Culver City to buy a sofa that was on sale. He took a weird route, and suddenly Traub realized where they were: the Galaxy Gate. “Hunter takes off his jacket and he’s wearing his Writers Guild strike T-shirt. He gets down on one knee and he proposes exactly where we met.” They married in May of 2013.

    Their strike romance is now legend in the community, according to Sanchez-Witzel. She was talking about the anniversary to a young writer picketing at Amazon this week. “She said, ‘I heard that story that someone got married, but I didn’t know it was actually true!’ I think there was some optimism in her eyes, like, ‘maybe we should do a singles picket.’”

    For Covington, this strike feels different than the 2007 one—and not just because he’s 10 years older with a wife and kids. Back then, writing for television and film felt like a more stable career. “Now I think most people are hurting,” he says, “especially when you adjust our earnings for inflation…. ln 2007, we were fighting about what TV on the internet was gonna be and getting a foothold in that. And now it’s that television as a career seems like it’s not a sustainable thing…. I feel like we are really fighting for the future in a way that we weren’t in 2007.” He pauses as more well-wishers with picket signs arrive, then continues. “A group existential crisis about a career is kind of a weird place to be. But that’s why we’re in a union, and that’s why we have each other.” 

    Joy Press

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