In the fall of last year, striking writers and actors made a deal with entertainment executives in Los Angeles. With conflicts hashed out and grievances addressed– including crucial controls on AI– the scales have inevitably tipped. Yet there is still debate on the overall impact of what the 2023 Writer’s Strike was able to achieve, one indelibly engraved in the story of American unions as a whole. We at Poppins are firmly on the side of all entertainers great and small, and we applaud the accomplishments of ordinary people against megalithic Hollywood production companies. Yet how far did the needle move? A year after its inception, people in the entertainment industry still struggle with concerns surrounding the strike’s aftermath, whether it was worth pursuing or not. Hopefully, we can shed some light on a fractious situation and determine what’s in store for the industry.
Furniture On The Titanic
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher asked a room full of reporters, “What are we doing, moving around furniture on The Titanic?” shortly before her union joined the Writer’s Guild of America in the early months of the strike. Drescher’s choice of a massive ironclad symbol of hubris rings quite true when one steps back and examines the situation she was in. Summer 2023: AI fever is sweeping pop culture, with actors, singers, and scriptwriters under threat of an imminent computer replacement. As this unprecedented technology advances, wages remain stagnant, and in many cases even drop as the effects of a global pandemic take a hold of the nation. Box office returns are lower than ever, leading to a tangible turn to streaming. Stingy residuals from streaming services mean that the average income for writers has appreciably decreased. Some believe the era of ‘Peak TV’ is over, a golden age in the rearview. To rejuvenate the industry, new models of revenue creation are accepted while old structures of working are fixed in place– and there is pressure for change.
This, in brief, is the origin of the strike and a sobering reminder that not all innovation necessarily leads to higher quality of life. Artificially generated art and baffling arrays of streaming services did nothing to address the longstanding inequality in the industry and, in many people’s eyes, perpetuated it. The building pressure in the entertainment industry was bound to pop, and on May 2nd 2023, that is precisely what happened when the leadership of the Writers Guild of America unanimously approved a strike against the studio executives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The change was a long time coming, as these handy graphs can illustrate.
‘Cruel, But Necessary Evil’
SAG-AFTRA and the WGA ceased all work from May to September 2023, picketing property of companies such as Paramount or Disney in protest of working conditions. An anonymous studio exec negatively impacted by the strike stated to Deadline “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” Another soulless husk feeding off the sweat of the working class expressed that this threatened eviction was “a cruel but necessary evil.” After this dramatic unmasking, public opinion fell firmly on the side of the underdog unions and against the AMPTP.
Strikers struggled to manage costs of living, but thanks to the generosity of a sympathetic public, funds in support of the strike helped mitigate these costs. As the months dragged on, it was clear to desperate studio execs that the strike could withstand a war of attrition, and as of September 25th 2023, they finally reached an agreement. Not all concessions were met by the AMPTP, but the compromises they agreed to are nothing short of sweeping. AI involvement with writing is keenly regulated, writers earn 3.5-5% residuals for streaming projects, streaming features over $12 million in budget are treated as theatrical releases and compensate their writers accordingly, a minimum on writers rooms is mandated, and new pensions and healthcare funds are established. The WGA estimates the value of the deal stands at $233 million– a hefty chunk of change for the billionaires that run the streaming services, and a considerable improvement for the ordinary actors and writers who contribute so much of their labor just to give people entertainment.
After The Storm
Is it fairer to blame industry decline on the strike, or the strike on industry decline? “Outside the cocoon of the union,” writes Katie Kilkenny, “certain agents and executives make the argument that the strikes dealt a harsh blow to the business at a time when it was already in a delicate state… One television exec notes they currently have more than 200 writers being submitted for three slots on a single show.” We as humans cannot know the full scope of a major event such as the Writer’s Strike until time gives it perspective. A year after the storm that shook the foundering vessel of Hollywood, what can we know?
The greed of studio execs must be an influencing factor on any analysis of the 2023 Writer’s Strike. As Adam Conover passionately explains, “studio executives told the press that they were planning on waiting out the Writer’s Guild until October, when writers will lose our apartments and homes and become homeless, and then be forced to come back to the table and take a bad deal… They took the mask off, they told on themselves bigger than anyone I have ever seen”. Major power brokers in Hollywood such as Bob Iger characterized the strike as an irresponsible attack on an industry that was already reeling from the pandemic; whether or not this critique was made in good faith, it is clear that Iger and other mustache-twirling supervillains wished to maintain a status quo that chiefly benefits them and not the millions of workers in the entertainment industry. Yet is there a shadow of sense to the billionaire bottomfeeder’s words? Opportunities have shrunk for creatives as compared to 2022, and opinion is mixed on the efficacy of the strikes. Due to the aforementioned minimum on writers rooms, studios paradoxically hire less writers overall. A TV writer that Katie Kilkenny interviewed says, “The deal we got didn’t equal writers getting more for [their work in] mini rooms. It meant companies just won’t have mini rooms anymore.” The quality of entertainment jobs has increased at the expense of their quantity.
In an atmosphere where it is harder to break into traditional forms of media than ever, it can be intimidating to come to grips with the changes in the entertainment industry. Like animals scrambling for a space aboard Noah’s Arc, it seems writers and actors are doomed to fight for their place in the entertainment industry as it faces a slow but steady contraction. Capitalistic entities may force us to think in zero-sum terms, but real life is not like that, and the ethical treatment of working artists cannot be sacrificed for some studio’s bottom line. And if the people in power tell us these are the signs of an industry in decay, it is common knowledge that accepting the situation as it stands suits only them. Billionaires entice us to believe in infinite progress without any decline because overwhelming success has accustomed them to their own way– but how accurate is that? Every living thing has a time for flourishing and a time for decay, and institutions like the entertainment industry are no different. Only the passage of time can tell if the Hollywood bubble is fit to burst– or if the ingenuity of human beings can revive it in a manner that is justifiable and fair for all.
Happy Labor Day, and thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Written by Lucas Beverley, @americanskald on Instagram.
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