For those outside of the entertainment industry hearing about this “impending writers’ strike,” and for those in Hollywood who are decrying the inevitable apocalypse, this is a brief post to clarify a few points. For the record, I’m a captain in the Writers Guild of America (West), I’m not an official spokesperson, I’m just a writer sharing his somewhat informed opinion on the matter.
To clarify, the negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP (the studios) have not started yet. They begin on March 20th. Anyone who claims “the writers are planning a strike” is simply wrong because we haven’t even started talking to the other side yet. How can we plan on using the nuclear option when we don’t even know the other side’s stance? Writers may be neurotic, we may be insecure, but we’re not irrational! The guild is still in the stage of reviewing and actively voting on our pattern of demands. And once negotiations start, no one will know anything for a while yet...
The contract expires on May 1st. Maybe we’ll have reached a deal by then, maybe not. Maybe the negotiations will extend another month or two, maybe not. Maybe we’ll take a strike authorization vote and, assuming our guild solidarity remains rock solid (it will), maybe we’ll have to threaten a strike. Beyond that, no one can truly know what’s going to happen. To say anything else at this point is to try to set up a self-benefitting narrative to one end or another. That, or folks are just expressing their sky-is-falling anxiety which, honestly, tends to go hand-in-hand with surviving in this crazy industry of ours.
But please remember that the sky is not falling; the industry goes through this every three years, and everything is ultimately cyclical, regardless of corporate, technological, and economic changes.
For more information, check out the guild’s contract information page: https://www.wgacontract2023.org/
Best,
EE