Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Hollywood writers to begin strike as contract negotiations collapse

Union representing 11,500 writers of film, television and other entertainment forms go on strike starting Tuesday

Peony Hirwani
Tuesday 02 May 2023 05:21 BST
Comments
Disney's Hollywood Studios experiences flooding

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

The Hollywood Writer’s Guild has called for a strike after representatives from Hollywood studios revealed labour talks with film and television writers concluded with no deal on Monday (1 May).

This will be the first writers’ strike – and the first Hollywood strike of any kind – in 15 years.

The union, representing 11,500 writers of film, television and other entertainment forms, is set to go on strike on Tuesday (2 May).

Months of negotiations, primarily over writers’ pay for streaming shows, have still left a considerable distance between the Writers Guild of America – whose East and West versions are technically two unions that act as a unit in these talks – and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Hollywood’s studios, streamers and production companies in negotiations.

The current contract expired on Monday.

As per reports, many people in the industry felt a strike was inevitable.

Writers, who voted overwhelmingly to authorise their leaders to call a strike, had already begun making signs for picket lines.

The last time a writers’ strike seemed imminent was in 2017, when a deal was reached hours after contracts expired.

Last year, an agreement was reached two days before the deadline to avert a strike that would have seen the participation of 60,000 Hollywood crew members.

In the past, writers have gone on strike for a total of six times.

The first came in 1960, a Writers Guild walkout that lasted nearly five months.

Strikes followed in 1973, 1981 and 1985. The longest work stoppage, lasting exactly five months, came in 1988.

The 2007-08 strike was resolved after three months. Among the main concessions the writers had then won were requirements that fledgling streaming shows would have to hire guild writers if their budgets were big enough. It was an early harbinger of nearly every entertainment labour fight in the years that followed.

More follows

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in