After a summer full of new movies and cinematic art, due to a writer and actor strike, a movie and TV show drought is nearing. Recently, there have been strikes in Hollywood by nearly 12,000 screenwriters in The Writers Guild of America (WGA) due to a disagreement with Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP). This strike overlapped with a strike of SAG-AFTRA actors also participating in a Hollywood-wide labour complaint.
The strikes of writers started in May when WGA claimed that the AMPTP had largely reduced the income of writers in the last decade. There was originally an agreement for a minimum wage for the writers but the agreement came to an end in June, strikes ensued and renegotiations started. Actors joined the strike because they felt they were not being compensated properly for reruns of shows on streaming services. The actors want to be paid based on the viewership of their shows but streaming services do not disclose that information.
This is the first time since 1960 that actors and screenwriters have walked out at the same time. The walk out caused shows like “SNL” to stop airing for the time being. Movies that were set to be released in the fall have been pushed back to later dates to account for the lack of workers and actors. This lack of new shows has caused old movies and TV shows to rise in popularity because it is all that is available and if it is old enough, it will feel like watching a new show.
Shows like “Gilmore Girls,” “Friends” and “Grey’s Anatomy” have once again risen in popularity as new shows have stopped being released and people want something to binge. There is no end in sight for these strikes as SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP do not hold regular meetings, and there has been no word from AMPTP since the announcement of the actors strikes on July 13th.