Members of the Writers Guild of America, the union of screenwriters in the United States, have their strike under control. They make sure to have a minimum of two screenwriters in front of the doors of the shoots and, qualifying as a picket line, the workers on the set can refuse to cross it. They have effectively communicated the points for which they fight: a significant increase in the minimum wage, guarantees regarding artificial intelligence, a return to a model of writers' rooms (which have become precarious due to streaming practices) and a part of the cake for the success of the works on the platforms.
However, beyond the demands, the mystery of the sector is the panorama that will remain after the strike: a perfect storm has broken out and, despite the fact that there are stoppages in popular productions such as Stranger things or The last of us, the market of the contents may end up unrecognizable once it has been resolved.
The directors' union, the Directors Guild of America, began talks last Wednesday with the alliance of Hollywood film and television producers, the AMPTP, with the intention of improving the residual benefits in the international arena of streaming.
In June it will be the union of actors, the Screen Actors Guild, who will renegotiate the agreement. With these parallel conversations, the specialists do not rule out a total blockade of the industry if they call their own strikes, especially due to the situation of the studios: they bet on streaming and, with the exception of Netflix, the platforms have losses.
Disney, in fact, announced last week that it would withdraw its own content from its service to make use of it in other ways, as Warner Bros. Discovery did by selling HBO's European production to other platforms and Westworld to ad-supported streaming channels.
The scenario could be the following. There will be less production volume to cut costs and devote more efforts to promoting the chosen content. The studios will once again develop and produce for third parties, a model that was in crisis, and will sell the broadcast rights of the series that no longer bring them subscribers. If the guilds obtain improvements in the residual benefits derived from their works, the absence of titles in the catalogs may become more conspicuous. And, due to the need not to burn money, the broadcast of seasons in the same day could become the exception and not the rule.
The future of the industry is up in the air and the writers' strike is another factor that may help shape it. They are clear that the current situation cannot serve as an excuse to further erode the trade, which is becoming increasingly difficult to live after the loss of seats in the rooms of screenwriters, control rooms and purchasing power.
