11,500 U.S. Film, TV Screenwriters Go On Strike

Television and movie writers declared that they will launch a strike for the first time in 15 years, as Hollywood girded for a walkout with widespread ramifications in a fight over fair pay in the streaming era, Jake Coyle reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: "Science Guy" Bill Nye joined striking Hollywood writers on the picket line.

The Writers Guild of America said that its 11,500 unionized screenwriters will head to the picket lines on Tuesday.

Negotiations between studios and the writers, which began in March, failed to reach a new contract before the writers’ current deal expired just after midnight, at 12:01 a.m. PDT Tuesday.

All script writing is to immediately cease, the guild informed its members.

The board of directors for the WGA, which includes both a West and an East branch, voted unanimously to call for a strike, effective at the stroke of midnight. Writers, they said, are facing an “existential crisis.”

The New York Times stressed the strike could paralyze TV shows and movies in the making as the writers said they suffer not only low pay but may also their jobs to artificial intelligence (AI), swapping living labor with dead labor that doesn’t think, feel, and has no blood, sweat, and tears.

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