Back in May of this year (2023) Hollywood writers and actors went on strike for poor wages and with the rising AI threat they wanted a change. The strike lasted for 148 days which is the second longest labor stoppage for the WGA (Writers Guild of America West) Union. Second to the 1988 strike which lasted 153 days.
The strike ended recently on the 27th of September, after a lot of back and forth between the business heads and the writers. Some of the biggest takeaways from the strike were the limitations and protections against AI, the wage improvements for the writers, and the guarantees for writers job security. The strike shut down the business which is what made company heads meet up with the protesters to beat out an agreement. David Goodman, co-chair of the WGA’s negotiating committee said that, “Once they did, they realized that everything we were asking for was not only reasonable but affordable.” referring to the strikers demands being reasonable.
The biggest thing that the writers were fighting for that they got was real AI protection and they got that. The studios will use writer scripts and not artificially created scripts, nor can they force the writers to use AI to write or help write scripts to meet deadlines and what not. Another big point of disagreement between the studios and the writers was the viewership transparency. So writers could see the amount of people that viewed their shows or movies so that they can see how well it preformed. Also, based on how well their shows did the studios will give bonuses to the writers. This is a huge win for the writers since before they were just paid a flat rate and wouldn’t be compensated at all even if their project was made extremely popular.
Overall the settlements from the strike were very good for the writers, some things are still being decided upon but what they’ve been promised so far is a great bonus. The actors however are still on strike and recently talks between the actors and the studios have stopped so as of right now its not looking up for the actors, on the writers side however things are looking up.
