For five months Hollywood writers went on strike for better pay, to prevent AI from taking over, and several other issues that are important.
They were joined by the SAG and others, but was it worth it?
That’s a good question as they did get many gains from the studios as reported by Deadline, but when looking at other reports it looks like the ones that actually won are the higher level writers, show runners and producers, and the studios.
It’s fairly common as strikes rarely benefit everyone involved, and with the belief that the studios pushed for the strike to trim the excess fat, so to speak, from their budgets, things are going to be interesting before too long.
A fresh restart
There has been a lot of speculation that the studios used the strike as a way to halt production on programs and movies they didn’t think would be successful after they already green lit them.
By doing so, this would allow them to limit spending and focus on previous properties to refill their coffers. It makes sense, and given how lazy and uncreative shows and movies have been the last few years it’s not a surprise.
In many ways it feels like the creativity in Hollywood died around 2010 as they focused on reboot and sequels while throwing in tons of messaging. Viewers started tuning them out and turned to old DVDs, reruns on TV and streaming services, and so on.
Given the state of the economy, it also made more sense to wait until movies hit the streaming services since it was far cheaper than going to the theater, and if we didn’t like it we could turn it off and be out roughly $5 instead of $20 or more depending on any extras we chose.
The cream rises
The issues in Hollywood are their own making and are the result of poor writing or micromanaging from the top or both.
In many ways, the strike can be looked at as the writers wanting more from an industry they were a huge part of destroying either through their own actions or through orders from above.
But now with their funds replenished to an extent, the studios are expected to let contracts expire or renegotiate for many day to day writers while those that have proven to be money makers continue to thrive.
It’s the nature of the business, and it may signal a paradigm shift in Hollywood since a majority of people simply didn’t care about the strike.
We have bigger problems to worry about and a lot of us didn’t miss the products we were being handed.
In some ways, this is similar to the 1970s where the industry was dominated by disaster films and George Lucas brought back imagination with Star Wars, which is a perfect example of Hollywood as a property that has been run into the ground since he sold it to Disney through over saturation, poor storytelling, and messaging.
Will Hollywood return to creative and imaginative storytelling or continue down the road that was crushing the industry, and was this worth it to the current writers as a whole? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
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