More than 11,000 film and television writers went on strike this week, staging a showdown with studio executives over how much power writers will have in an increasingly digital, tech-reliant entertainment industry.
Writers say their profession has been devalued in the age of streaming, even as studio profits soar, executives rake in millions in compensation, and demand for new content remains ceaseless. In 2021, 12 of the top media and entertainment executives received about $1bn in total compensation between them. In contrast, half of writers are now receiving the minimum compensation for their jobs, their union said, compared with only a third a decade ago.
Arguing that the industry is trying to turn writers into content farmers or narrative gig workers, members of Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted overwhelmingly to enact the first work stoppage in 15 years after new contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down.
The WGA’s key demands include increased pay; better compensation when shows are transferred to streaming services, rather than re-aired on television; regulations for how artificial intelligence is used in the writing process; an end to the “abuse of mini-rooms”, in which a smaller group of writers develop scripts often for minimum pay rates despite their seniority or experience; and increases to pensions and health funds.
The Guardian spoke with six film and TV writers, from Hollywood newcomers to industry veterans, to understand what’s motivating them to get through a work stoppage that could last for weeks or months.
The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
‘This was a path to a middle-class life’
Brittani Nichols, TV writer on Abbott Elementary
Before she became a writer on a hit television series, Nichols worked for streaming shows – including one on Quibi, a streaming service that failed in less than a year.
Rather than getting pay grade promotions as she gained more experience, she had often been “forced or asked” to repeat levels, and to work for the union minimum pay, Nichols said. Lower pay, combined with the trend of streaming shows that have fewer total episodes, have left Hollywood writers scrambling to line up one gig after another to make rent.
“If people think how stressful it is to do a job search one time, imagine having to do that several times a year,” Nichols said.
“People aren’t becoming television writers to become rich and famous. We do it because we like writing, we’re funny, and this was a path to this middle-class life, and now that’s being ripped away from us. It’s not a sustainable career,” Nichols said.
The instability in the industry has left even writers with good jobs worried about the future, Nichols said. One writer on the first season of Abbott Elementary had mice in her apartment, but was too afraid of her job disappearing to be willing to pay “a little bit more rent”, Nichols said. She knows writers who work for network television shows driving cars “that are barely functioning”.
The Writers Guild is currently “the most diverse it’s ever been”, and many newer writers come from less privileged backgrounds, and know what it’s like to struggle, Nichols said.
“There are a lot of people in this newer generation in the guild that are very aware of what lies on the other side, if we don’t win this fight,” she said. “When you have a lot to lose, you’re willing to put a lot on the line.”
‘We’re setting an example for what American workers should tolerate’
Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz, TV writer on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and showrunner on HBO Max’s Gordita Chronicles
For Muñoz-Liebowitz, who has been in the industry for 10 years, one of the biggest concerns is “mini-rooms” where experienced writers often receive less money and stability and up-and-coming writers aren’t provided opportunities to gain experience by working on set.
In a recent mini-room for season two of Gordita Chronicles, for example, she says her colleague with 25 years’ experience was only going to be paid the minimum rate. “There’s a lot of abuse of our contracts in that regard, expecting upper-level writers and showrunners to do free work,” says Muñoz-Liebowitz.
She says mini-rooms fail to offer younger and up-and-coming writers a chance to gain experience working on set alongside showrunners, experience that ultimately sets them up for higher-paying jobs.
“The people stuck in this sort of purgatory of not knowing how to produce or cut episodes are women and writers of color because they are the people who are just now really making inroads in the profession,” she says.
She also disputed the misconception that writers are making significant amounts of money, saying most writers face difficulties in finding enough shows to work on and this disproportionately affects younger writers and writers of color who don’t have the network or clout to procure employment as quickly.
She argues their strike will set an example for other labor movements in the US. “I imagine a lot of people who aren’t in our industry are wondering why do we have to care about this labor negotiation? The reason it’s important is because organized labor has been under attack for quite some time, and our negotiations set a tone for what a worker will tolerate from a corporation.”
‘The Golden Age of Hollywood respected screenwriters. Now our profession is at stake’
John Fusco, writer on films including Young Guns, Thunderheart, Hidalgo and the Netflix series Marco Polo
“As a WGA member of 40 years, I feel very strongly that what we’re asking for is not unreasonable. In fact, I think that’s a serious understatement,” said Fusco, a writer who has worked in the industry for decades. Writers are vital in the golden age of streaming, but aren’t treated as such by production studios, he argues.
“Ask anyone in the industry what the most important creative element is, they will say ‘story’. Yet, the producers are losing sight of that as they claim the goldmine of streaming is still an ‘emerging business’ so they don’t want to pay writers.”
One of Fusco’s mentors was the late Waldo Salt, a screenwriter who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and went on to write Academy Award winning screenplays for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home. Fusco surmises that Salt would be outraged over current industry standards that leave workers “underpaid and overworked” and “have put the very profession of screenwriting at stake”.
“Even in the golden age in which Waldo worked, and all through my career, screenwriters have fought against devaluation and disrespect,” he added. “We used to say, ‘The studios take our creations, cut us out of the process, we don’t get any recognition, and what do they pay us? A fortune.’ Now, even that remunerative compensation for the abuse is gone. It’s beyond the pale.”
‘Even the people who produce the escapism are suffering’
Alex O’Keefe, former Green New Deal activist and TV writer on The Bear
When he attended an award show for the first season of The Bear, the critically acclaimed show about a Chicago sandwich shop, writer Alex O’Keefe said he had a negative bank account balance and was wearing a bow tie he had bought on credit.
He said he had written for The Bear remotely, during the pandemic winter of 2021, from an apartment in Brooklyn without heat. When his space heater malfunctioned, O’Keefe said, he wrote in the public library to keep warm.
But as a writer who moved to Los Angeles last year to work on a Netflix mini-room for a show with an uncertain future, O’Keefe said, he felt the pressure to appear successful in order to make it in the industry.
“Escapism is nice. That’s part of my job. In the real world, even the people who produce the escapism are suffering right now,” he said.
O’Keefe said he worried about what might happen when he started speaking publicly about his own financial challenges, but so far, the reaction has only been positive, and he has received private messages from many writers of color with similar stories.
“Before this union drive, these issues I was experiencing, I thought I was experiencing them as an individual,” he said. “I thought, ‘Man, I must be doing this all wrong’… I was blaming myself,” he said.
“When we come together as workers, we realize, 98% of our union agrees with us: this is fundamentally broken.”
‘We’re asking for pennies compared to what CEOs make from our work’
Danny Tolli, TV writer and co-chair of the WGAW’s Latinx Writers Committee
Tolli, a TV writer since 2014, said he’d barely seen his pay increase despite nearly a decade of experience and writing credits that include Roswell, New Mexico and Shondaland’s The Catch.
“No matter the experience and my growing résumé, my salary either has stayed the same or has actually been decreasing,” said Tolli. “I attribute that to the rise in streaming and how studios have put into practice mini-rooms and shorter orders [fewer episodes] as the cause.”
His typical hiatuses between seasons or shows have increased over the years, while low residual pay from streaming shows, the payment for rerun episodes on networks, means his income during the downtime is unreliable. (He cited a recent $23 residual check for a TV show on a streaming service.) These lags and declining pay have pushed Tolli to consider taking on second or third jobs to make ends meet.
“It’s completely unsustainable that this new model leans so heavily on streaming and takes advantage of the writers who are creating content that is making these studios billions and billions of dollars,” said Tolli. “All that we’re really asking for is pennies on the dollar of the revenue that the CEOs are making off the shows that we create.”
‘The future of everyone who makes this type of TV is in jeopardy’
Brad Evans, comedy writer, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Since 2020, Evans has worked for one of America’s big late-night shows. He spent this Monday on the job, developing jokes for an episode of the Tonight Show that will never air: the show went dark as soon as the writers’ strike was announced late Monday night.
By Tuesday morning, Evans was on the picket line on Fifth Avenue in New York, outside a meeting that Peacock, the streaming service operated by NBCUniversal, was holding with advertisers.
In his job, “There’s protections in place from decades and decades of TV writers going on strike and fighting for a fair contract,” Evans said. “Streaming TV, online TV, these are new mediums and we’re just fighting to get those same protections in place.”
Comedy shows on streaming platforms, for example, currently have no base pay rates in their contract, as television comedy writers do, Evans said. “They’re basically negotiating their pay from zero.”
And as more shows migrate to streaming platforms, “the future of everyone who makes this type of TV is in jeopardy”, he said.
“I feel like I’m fighting for the future of this profession, for other people and myself,” Evans said.
