GUEST ESSAY
The Hollywood Writers’ Strike Isn’t About Money, It’s About Survival
April 30, 2023
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By Zack Stentz
Mr. Stentz is a screenwriter and the co-writer of “X-Men: First Class,” “Agent Cody Banks” and “Thor.”
An old Klingon proverb tells us, “Only a fool fights in a burning house.” In light of that bit of wisdom from “Star Trek,” it might seem surprising that the Writers Guild of America West and East, the sister unions that represent the country’s film and television writers, are engaged in a fraught labor negotiation with the studios and streaming companies that could lead, after their contract expires on May 1, to Hollywood’s biggest strike in 15 years.
Looking at the current state of the entertainment industry, we see a theatrical business still struggling to recover from Covid-era disruptions and a television landscape of consolidation and cutbacks in the wake of an unsustainable boom in streaming content.
Surely this must be the absolute worst possible time for writers to strike and shut down scripted programming, right?
Well, yes. Unfortunately, the current negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (an organization that represents the old Hollywood studios and upstart streaming companies alike) are absolutely make or break for writers. At stake is nothing less than the survival of film and television writing as a viable middle-class career for the majority of our membership
To be fair, screenwriting has always been a precarious, feast-or-famine way to make a living. With untold thousands drawn by the real and perceived glamour and wealth of Hollywood, the odds of selling a script or getting hired onto a show are long — like, high school football star making it in the N.F.L. long. Continuing to succeed consistently over the course of a career can often seem next to impossible.
I only made it into the W.G.A. after eight years of rejection, working as a journalist by day and tapping out screenplays every evening until eventually getting hired onto a since-forgotten syndicated action hour, “Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda.” It was the absolute lowest rung of scripted entertainment, but at the time it felt like heaven, and even paid enough for my little family to buy a home in an unglamorous corner of the San Fernando Valley.
But after three seasons of steady television work and a screenplay credit on the hit movie “Agent Cody Banks,” my luck finally ran out. It took nearly three more years of meetings, pitches that went nowhere and buying groceries on credit cards before I got regular work again.
Luckily, the W.G.A.’s health insurance plan is structured so writers bank points that let us keep coverage between jobs, or else my family’s financial solvency would have been in serious doubt. The W.G.A.’s members make on average around $250,000 a year — and that’s before taxes, union dues and commissions to agents, managers and lawyers. The reality is that the seemingly big paychecks of Hollywood have to last through the lean periods that nearly every writer experiences.
Traditionally, one of the biggest buffers against that volatility is residuals: the money that writers earn from the reuse of our work, encompassing everything from cable and syndicated reruns of old television episodes to airlines licensing movies for in-flight viewing. The formulas used to calculate the money owed for various forms of reuse are complicated and vary widely across platforms. As a result, the payments can be relatively tiny or very large — and one of the more delightful parts of being a working screenwriter is opening your mailbox and seeing the distinctive green envelope that residuals come in, not knowing if the check inside will cover an In-N-Out burger or your mortgage payment.
But the odds of a big check that bails out a writer in dire financial straights are growing ever longer. Programming is moving increasingly away from theatrical, broadcast and cable to streaming platforms, which typically pay residuals at a far lower rate. This is why one of the major areas in our current negotiation is bringing streaming residuals more in line with broadcast and cable rates.
The issues being hashed out at the bargaining table include increasing the minimum compensation for writers and strengthening so-called span protection, which ensures that writers are paid fairly if the time spent creating a TV episode extends beyond two and a half weeks, as the industry shifts from the 22-episodes-a-year world of network television to the eight-episodes-every-18-months-if-you’re-lucky model embraced by streaming companies. The W.G.A. is also pushing to address the proliferation in streaming television of so-called mini rooms — writing staffs that are smaller in size and active for a shorter duration than a traditional writers’ room.
The studios and streamers are, of course, loath to part with any more money than they need to. They point to their battered stock prices, reduced box office revenue and round after round of layoffs as evidence that things are tough all over.
But allowing screenwriters to sustain a stable career is absolutely the smartest investment that the industry can make. After all, writers’ imaginations are the ultimate source of the movies and shows that generate billions of dollars for their parent companies. One of my biggest thrills is walking onto a soundstage where grips are banging together a set and realizing that hundreds of people and millions of dollars have been marshaled to bring to life a scenario that once existed only in my brain.
Keeping that spigot of creativity open is only possible if writers don’t have to scramble for day jobs or contemplate a career switch every time the phone stops ringing. Marc Cherry created the hit show “Desperate Housewives” while living on his “Golden Girls” residuals. And I wouldn’t be able to spin my stories of rival wolf dynasties, cursed mountain climbers and quests for immortality were it not for the financial buffer provided by my good friends Thor and the X-Men.
The last thing we need is for film and television to become like the music industry, another creative field disrupted by the internet and tech money, where the middle class has been hollowed out while risk has been pushed from the companies onto the artists themselves. The W.G.A.’s fight isn’t just about keeping writers employed but about maintaining the health of the entire ecosystem that makes our industry run and keeps the supply of quality film and television flowing for viewers around the world.
I do worry that some of my fellow writers — especially younger ones who joined during the streaming-driven boom years, when the number of writers in the W.G.A. reporting earnings grew from 4,500 to more than 6,000 — have unrealistic ideas about what a successful negotiation can accomplish. No contract can bring back the 1990s model of shows that ran 22-episode seasons for eight years, or fully reinflate the 2010s streaming bubble. Whether we win concessions from the studios at the bargaining table or even through a strike, the brutal reality remains that, going forward, there will likely be fewer well-paying jobs in a volatile industry that may force us to hustle for work more than ever.
So can the W.G.A., the studios and the streamers come to terms without a strike? Or are our positions irreconcilable?
Conventional wisdom in Hollywood right now is that a strike — possibly a long one — is inevitable. But I’m still hopeful that the two sides can reach a compromise that keeps the industry working, because regardless of whether they realize it, doing right by the writers is an investment that will benefit the companies that employ us, as well. Like my hero Captain James T. Kirk, I don’t believe in a no-win scenario.
By Zack Stentz
Mr. Stentz is a screenwriter and the co-writer of “X-Men: First Class,” “Agent Cody Banks” and “Thor.”
An old Klingon proverb tells us, “Only a fool fights in a burning house.” In light of that bit of wisdom from “Star Trek,” it might seem surprising that the Writers Guild of America West and East, the sister unions that represent the country’s film and television writers, are engaged in a fraught labor negotiation with the studios and streaming companies that could lead, after their contract expires on May 1, to Hollywood’s biggest strike in 15 years.
Looking at the current state of the entertainment industry, we see a theatrical business still struggling to recover from Covid-era disruptions and a television landscape of consolidation and cutbacks in the wake of an unsustainable boom in streaming content.
Surely this must be the absolute worst possible time for writers to strike and shut down scripted programming, right?
Well, yes. Unfortunately, the current negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (an organization that represents the old Hollywood studios and upstart streaming companies alike) are absolutely make or break for writers. At stake is nothing less than the survival of film and television writing as a viable middle-class career for the majority of our membership
To be fair, screenwriting has always been a precarious, feast-or-famine way to make a living. With untold thousands drawn by the real and perceived glamour and wealth of Hollywood, the odds of selling a script or getting hired onto a show are long — like, high school football star making it in the N.F.L. long. Continuing to succeed consistently over the course of a career can often seem next to impossible.
I only made it into the W.G.A. after eight years of rejection, working as a journalist by day and tapping out screenplays every evening until eventually getting hired onto a since-forgotten syndicated action hour, “Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda.” It was the absolute lowest rung of scripted entertainment, but at the time it felt like heaven, and even paid enough for my little family to buy a home in an unglamorous corner of the San Fernando Valley.
But after three seasons of steady television work and a screenplay credit on the hit movie “Agent Cody Banks,” my luck finally ran out. It took nearly three more years of meetings, pitches that went nowhere and buying groceries on credit cards before I got regular work again.
Luckily, the W.G.A.’s health insurance plan is structured so writers bank points that let us keep coverage between jobs, or else my family’s financial solvency would have been in serious doubt. The W.G.A.’s members make on average around $250,000 a year — and that’s before taxes, union dues and commissions to agents, managers and lawyers. The reality is that the seemingly big paychecks of Hollywood have to last through the lean periods that nearly every writer experiences.
Traditionally, one of the biggest buffers against that volatility is residuals: the money that writers earn from the reuse of our work, encompassing everything from cable and syndicated reruns of old television episodes to airlines licensing movies for in-flight viewing. The formulas used to calculate the money owed for various forms of reuse are complicated and vary widely across platforms. As a result, the payments can be relatively tiny or very large — and one of the more delightful parts of being a working screenwriter is opening your mailbox and seeing the distinctive green envelope that residuals come in, not knowing if the check inside will cover an In-N-Out burger or your mortgage payment.
But the odds of a big check that bails out a writer in dire financial straights are growing ever longer. Programming is moving increasingly away from theatrical, broadcast and cable to streaming platforms, which typically pay residuals at a far lower rate. This is why one of the major areas in our current negotiation is bringing streaming residuals more in line with broadcast and cable rates.
The issues being hashed out at the bargaining table include increasing the minimum compensation for writers and strengthening so-called span protection, which ensures that writers are paid fairly if the time spent creating a TV episode extends beyond two and a half weeks, as the industry shifts from the 22-episodes-a-year world of network television to the eight-episodes-every-18-months-if-you’re-lucky model embraced by streaming companies. The W.G.A. is also pushing to address the proliferation in streaming television of so-called mini rooms — writing staffs that are smaller in size and active for a shorter duration than a traditional writers’ room.
The studios and streamers are, of course, loath to part with any more money than they need to. They point to their battered stock prices, reduced box office revenue and round after round of layoffs as evidence that things are tough all over.
But allowing screenwriters to sustain a stable career is absolutely the smartest investment that the industry can make. After all, writers’ imaginations are the ultimate source of the movies and shows that generate billions of dollars for their parent companies. One of my biggest thrills is walking onto a soundstage where grips are banging together a set and realizing that hundreds of people and millions of dollars have been marshaled to bring to life a scenario that once existed only in my brain.
Keeping that spigot of creativity open is only possible if writers don’t have to scramble for day jobs or contemplate a career switch every time the phone stops ringing. Marc Cherry created the hit show “Desperate Housewives” while living on his “Golden Girls” residuals. And I wouldn’t be able to spin my stories of rival wolf dynasties, cursed mountain climbers and quests for immortality were it not for the financial buffer provided by my good friends Thor and the X-Men.
The last thing we need is for film and television to become like the music industry, another creative field disrupted by the internet and tech money, where the middle class has been hollowed out while risk has been pushed from the companies onto the artists themselves. The W.G.A.’s fight isn’t just about keeping writers employed but about maintaining the health of the entire ecosystem that makes our industry run and keeps the supply of quality film and television flowing for viewers around the world.
I do worry that some of my fellow writers — especially younger ones who joined during the streaming-driven boom years, when the number of writers in the W.G.A. reporting earnings grew from 4,500 to more than 6,000 — have unrealistic ideas about what a successful negotiation can accomplish. No contract can bring back the 1990s model of shows that ran 22-episode seasons for eight years, or fully reinflate the 2010s streaming bubble. Whether we win concessions from the studios at the bargaining table or even through a strike, the brutal reality remains that, going forward, there will likely be fewer well-paying jobs in a volatile industry that may force us to hustle for work more than ever.
So can the W.G.A., the studios and the streamers come to terms without a strike? Or are our positions irreconcilable?
Conventional wisdom in Hollywood right now is that a strike — possibly a long one — is inevitable. But I’m still hopeful that the two sides can reach a compromise that keeps the industry working, because regardless of whether they realize it, doing right by the writers is an investment that will benefit the companies that employ us, as well. Like my hero Captain James T. Kirk, I don’t believe in a no-win scenario.
More on the screenwriting industry
Follow The New York Times Opinion section
