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When the last Hollywood strike happened — 16 years ago — the internet hadn’t transformed the TV and movie industries. Broadcast networks still have large audiences, and cable channels are still growing. The studio superhero boom has begun, with DVDs generating $16 billion in annual sales.
Since then, rapid technological change has upended Hollywood in almost unimaginable ways. Traditional TV lives off of ratings.film studio, by poor ticket sales For dramas and comedies, there’s an almost complete fallback to franchise spectacles. The DVD business is over; Netflix will last shipment Small Silver Plate for September 29th.
Now it’s the streaming world. The pandemic has accelerated this shift.
What doesn’t change much? The formula studios use to pay TV and film creators, build the stage strike again. “Writer compensation needs to evolve for a streaming-first world,” said Rich Greenfield, founder of research firm LightShed Partners.
Barring an unlikely last-minute resolution with studios, more than 11,000 unionized screenwriters could head to picket lines in Los Angeles and New York as soon as Tuesday, a move that, depending on its duration, would decimate Hollywood’s creative minds. The assembly line is winding down. Leaders of the Writers Guild of America call it a “existentialMoment, arguing that despite the explosion of content in the streaming age, compensation has stagnated — so much so that even seasoned writers struggle to succeed and sometimes fail to pay the bills.
“Screenwriters of all levels and genres, whether it’s feature film or television, we’ve all been demeaned and taken advantage of financially by the studios,” says author Danny Tolli, whose credits include “Roswell, New Mexico” and the Shondaland Show”catch“
“These studios make billions of dollars in profit, and they spend billions of dollars on content — content that we create with our own blood, sweat and tears,” Mr. Tory continued. “But sometimes I still have to worry about how I’m going to pay my mortgage. How I’m going to support my family. I’ve considered Uber to supplement my income.”
Studio heads have largely remained public silence, leaving communication to the union of film and TV producers who bargain on their behalf. In its statement, the group said its goal was a “mutually beneficial deal” that would be possible “only if the Guild is committed to shifting its focus to serious bargaining” and “seeking reasonable compromises.”
Privately, many studio and streaming service executives paint writers as performative and out of touch. you can’t make a living as a tv writer? By what standard? Business changes; get used to it.
In some ways, a Hollywood strike is long overdue. Since the 1940s, with a few exceptions, strikes have rocked the entertainment industry almost like clockwork—every seven or eight years—often in keeping with the turmoil of a rapidly changing industry. The dawn of television. The rise of the cable network.
“These things happen every five years or so, 10 years,” Clemenza explained in “The Godfather,” one of Hollywood’s most storied productions, as the film’s gangster families “quarreled” with each other. “Helps get rid of bad blood.”
For generations, since the end of the silent film era, Hollywood screenwriters have complained that studios treat them as second-class citizens — that their artistic contributions are undervalued (and underpaid), especially with actors and directors. contribution compared to.
Among Hollywood workers, screenwriters have had the most strikes (six) and were responsible for the most recent strike in the entertainment industry in 2007. It was an uncertain economic time—the Great Recession was in progress—but “new media” were on the horizon. Apple had already started selling iPods that could play video. Disney offers $2 downloads for “Lost” episodes. Hulu is in its infancy.
An existing contract between the studio and the Writers Guild of America, which expires at 12:01 a.m. PT Tuesday, sets the minimum weekly salary for certain TV writers and producers at $7,412. (Agents for experienced writers are negotiable.) According to the association, one issue involved the number of weeks a writer worked in the streaming era.
The network norm of 22, 24 or even 26 episodes per season has mostly disappeared because of streaming. Most streaming series have 8 to 12 episodes.As a result, writer-producers reportedly work a median of nearly 40 weeks on network shows Guild databut with only 24 weeks on the streaming show, it’s hard to get a steady paycheck.
Streaming also weakens the residual. Before streaming, the writers got paid the rest every time a show was resold — into syndication, played overseas, resold on DVD. But global streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon have cut off those distribution channels.
Instead, streaming services pay a fixed residual.Writers say there’s no way to know if the fees are fair because services Hide viewership dataThe new contract must include a formula for paying residuals based on opinions, union leaders said.
Guild leaders argued that if they were given everything they wanted, the studio would spend a total of $600 million a year. However, the companies are under pressure from Wall Street to cut costs. Gains for one group of entertainment workers will almost certainly need to be extended to others: the contract with the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA expires on June 30.
Hollywood companies say they simply cannot afford widespread wage increases.Disney, saddled with $45 billion in debt, has laid off thousands of workers in recent days as part of a movement 7,000 jobs lost to the end of June. Disney+ is still unprofitable, though the company has vowed to change that by next year. Disney is Hollywood’s largest provider of union-covered drama and comedy (890 episodes in 2021-22 season).
Warner Bros. Discovery, which has about $47 billion in debt, has cut thousands of jobs as part of a $4 billion divestment plan. NBCUniversal is also tightening its belt as it grapples with cable cutting and a troublesome advertising market.
These companies remain highly profitable. But they haven’t delivered the kind of steady profit growth Wall Street rewards.
Writers swagger into these conversations. In 2019, as a film and television screenwriter fired their agent In a movement they see as a conflict of interest, many agency leaders believe the guild will eventually break up. That never happened: after a 22-month stalemate, big agencies actually gave writers what they wanted.
For screenwriters, there is also pent-up demand for a raise, making Inflation climbs for the worseThe pandemic was shutting down Hollywood when writers last had a chance to negotiate a contract, so the two sides quickly struck a deal — in Mr. Greenfield’s words, “basically kicking the can down the road”. In previous negotiating cycles, writers focused more on supporting their generous health plans.
Writers were riled up by the mixed messages companies sent about their finances.
“NBCUniversal is doing extremely well both operationally and financially,” Brian Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, wrote to employees last week when the unit’s top executive removed.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos gets value $50.3 million Netflix revealed last week that by 2022, it will grow 32% from 2021.
“A lot of people are still getting very rich from a Hollywood product — just not from the creator of that product,” said screenwriter Matt Ember, whose credits include “be smart“”war with grandpa” and animation”Home“
Result: Things can get worse before they get better.
“Every industry undergoes a course correction,” says founder Laura Lewis. rebel media, an entertainment production and financing company. “Maybe this is an opportunity to adjust the model for the next phase of the entertainment business.”
“The question is,” she continued, “how much pain do we have to suffer to get there.”
John Kobrin Contribution report.
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