By: Aumrita Savdharia and Olivia Yu
Every three years, the branches of the Writers Guild of America meet to negotiate a new contract with Hollywood studios. This year’s contract was filled with information that could lead to undesirable consequences for writers and studios. The primary discussion points were using Artificial Intelligence for scriptwriting and fair compensation for writers. The W.G.A. argued that they want better residual pay, stating it is an important source of income for the middle-class writer. Studios use excuses, such as writers not being in formal writers’ rooms should mean studios should not have to pay them fairly. The strike affected many other industries, creating collateral damage by hurting the various businesses that support the production of a film. According to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, the Californian economy lost about $5 billion from the strike.
The most recent strike lasted 146 days–becoming the second-longest strike in Hollywood. One of Hollywood’s largest studios announced they had reached an agreement. The union members voted to end the strike and ratify the contract. The agreement states that the writers will get an increase in their minimum wage, increased pension and health fund rates, no requirement for the writers to use AI when writing, and an increase in the size of the writing teams. Writers can now go back to work with better conditions, yet they are still not the ideal conditions for most writers.
While the writers and studios have reached an agreement for now, many people are still unhappy with the writer's conditions and various aspects of the deal. Writers are still primarily unsatisfied with their compensation from streaming service revenues because the studios still earn substantially more than the individual writers who worked on the project. Moreover, the writer’s battle with AI is also proving to be a pain point in such negotiations, because for studios AI would streamline their processes. In contrast, for writers it takes away the creativity of their work. Hollywood’s response to the 2023 W.G.A. strike serves as a litmus test for its long-term success in the face of the ever-changing media landscape.
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