Hollywood may be looking at another writers strike nearly a decade after the last major one, as the Writers Guild of America East and West has voted to authorize a strike should a new deal not be reached.
Over 6,000 WGA members — around 67.5 percent of eligible voters in the guild — voted yesterday for whether the guild's leadership could authorize the strike next week. 96.3 percent of those ballots were votes in favor of allowing their leadership to authorize a strike, a higher percentage and total number of votes than that which authorized the 2007-08 strike.
If no deal is made by May 2, the WGA leadership can order a walkout.
The WGA members would be able to go on strike on May 2 should a new deal for their union with Hollywood studios and producers via the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, not be reached by the time the guild's contract expires on May 1. Issues involved include higher minimum wages, residuals from streaming services, and more.
Negotiations for a new deal resume today, with a week left until that deadline. According to THR, the two sides recently stood at about a $350 million difference in the deals they sought.
"The companies are committed to reaching a deal at the bargaining table that keeps the industry working. The 2007 writers’ strike hurt everyone. Writers lost more than $287 million in compensation that was never recovered," the AMPTP said in a statement obtained by The New York Times.
The 2007-08 writers strike began in November of 2007 and did not conclude until February 2008, affecting the production of dozens of different shows, cutting short seasons of many scripted dramas and forcing live shows to go off the air temporarily. The strike also affected movie production, including, most notably Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
It depends on where in production that show is. The most immediate effect will be felt by late-night television, which will either have to stop airing new episodes or resort to unscripted shows, which hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, and others did during the last strike.
The timing of the strike would also impact the final stretch of episodes for Saturday Night Live's current season, which are set to be some of the first episodes to air live across every time zone in America.
It's more difficult to nail down the exact ramifications the strike would have on scripted TV for networks and streaming services. Scripted television now includes hundreds of programs as opposed to. the few dozen airing during the strike a decade ago. The strike would affect shows currently in production, with writers working on scripts currently at the time of a strike having to stop.
Any completed scripts could still be filmed and produced, and a show like Game of Thrones, which entered production long before the strike, will remain on track to air. Depending on the length of the strike, original summer programming for network, cable, and streaming TV services would be the most affected.
As mentioned above, it depends on the status of every individual project. Scripts are often one of the earliest portions of a film production completed, and as there are many finished scripts in Hollywood, there will still be plenty of movies that can be produced. As Transformers 2 showed with the last strike, however, some films may rush into production without completed screenplays.
Again, it will likely depend project to project, and whether WGA guild members are involved with each game. Work outside of the writing for games could still be completed, but screenplays and adjustments to them could not be done by guild members. Any narrative-focused game's production cycle could be thrown off depending on the length of the strike.
Projects that include WGA members, based on previous winners of WGA Awards winners, would include The Last of Us Part II and Amy Hennig's Star Wars game. Though of course, script work done on these projects can still be used in their current production cycle.
Theoretically, non-guild members could be brought in to write, however Screen Actors Guild actors, who are in a sister guild to WGA members, could decide not to perform any work done by non-WGA writers.
The strike will likely affect every project on a case-by-case basis, and only if and when the strike becomes a reality will we be able to tell how film, TV, and games will have to deal with the repercussions. The strike has not yet officially started yet, though, and negotiations could prevent it from kicking off next week. Stay tuned to IGN for more on the possible strike as it develops.
Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.
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