Striking Hollywood Writers to Hold Talks With Studios

Facts

• After nearly three months of striking, Hollywood's striking writers and major studios have agreed to meet for negotiations on Friday for the first time since their strike for higher pay demands started in May.¹
• The Writers Guild of America (WGA) said Tuesday that the head of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a group representing major studios, streaming services, and production companies in negotiations, had requested a meeting on Friday to talk about the resumption of contracts.²
• Prior to the start of the strike, talks between the WGA and AMPTP stalled after the two sides failed to agree on the issues of viewership-based residuals, minimum staffing levels, and the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI).³
• AMPTP said in a statement on Tuesday that the alliance was committed to finding a "mutually beneficial deal," though no further details were given. It's unknown if a similar invitation was made to the actors' union.⁴
• The strike of nearly 11.5K writers has disrupted production across Hollywood, leading to the cancellation of new episodes of late-night shows, delays for fall TV seasons, and has halted work on big-budget movies.¹
• In July, SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160K actors and performers, joined the WGA strike, also demanding higher streaming-era pay and curbs on the use of AI.³

Sources: ¹Reuters, ²CBS, ³Rolling Stone, and ⁴Washington Post.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by The New Republic. The writers' strike is an important development for all workers and touches on issues that are old and new. Billionaires in the film and television industries are trying to take advantage of writers' creative content while not compensating them fairly. However, this isn't just an old-fashioned labor dispute; questions surrounding AI make this strike a very important inflection point for workers' rights in the digital age.
• Narrative B, as provided by National Review. The privileged group of Hollywood writers are putting the entertainment industry in a state of limbo, striking until studios meet their demands while complaining about the threat of AI. However, the solution is quite simple: write better scripts than AI can. Rather than trying to impede this emerging technology, they should use it to supplement and improve their work.