The ongoing writers’ strike shows no signs of being resolved anytime soon, with the WGA picketing major studios and disrupting location shoots across the country. Lines have been drawn in the sand, with prominent donors like J.J. Abrams, Ryan Murphy, and Adam McKay all donating to the Entertainment Community Fund to financially support writers struggling to make ends meet.
We’ve now got an interesting perspective from Jessica Jones, Cloak and Dagger, Supergirl, and The Handmaid‘s Tale writer J. Holtham, who’s out on the picket lines fighting for fairer treatment. Speaking to Popverse, he revealed how studios have been gradually tightening the screws on writers behind-the-scenes:
“The studios have just abused the situation even more. Now, instead of a writers’ room for 20 weeks, you’ll get a mini room for 6 or 8 weeks, then the writers leave, and if you’re the showrunner you might just be writing all the episodes yourself, covering set yourself, covering production yourself, and everything gets amortized down.
It’s a real f**k you.”
Major studios have so far been relatively bullish about the strike, claiming that they have a backlog of completed content that’ll see them through to the end of the strike. Holtham thinks that, at least to some degree, they’re bluffing:
“Two of the big producers, Apple and Amazon, they don’t care. Their TV business is not their core business, it’s an add-on, it’s a loss leader, so it doesn’t matter to them if there’s new content or not.
But Warner Brothers can’t survive without it. Netflix even can’t survive without new content. There’s a lot of pressure all over the place.”
It’s worth remembering that the last major writers’ strike lasted from November 2007 to February 2008, so the entertainment industry may face more chaos in the coming months. The true consequences of this may not be felt until next year when productions now shooting make it to air, so buckle yourself in for some substandard TV and movies.
Here’s hoping the studios recognize that the people coming up with these stories and characters deserve to be treated better and the strike resolves sooner rather than later.