LOS ANGELES (KNX) - President Joe Biden weighed in on the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike during a White House screening of upcoming Disney+ series American Born Chinese on Monday night.
“I sincerely hope the writers’ strike in Hollywood gets resolved, and the writers are given a fair deal they deserve as soon as possible,” he said to an audience that included Disney executives.
His comments come as the strike enters its second week with no end in sight. In addition to picket lines outside the major studios, WGA “hit squads” are now picketing specific filming locations, forcing productions to shut down, Deadline reports.
Several other entertainment unions, including IATSE and the Teamsters, will refuse to cross WGA picket lines to work. Under labor laws, only two people are required to qualify as an official picket line — which means that a pair of people holding signs is all it takes to shut down a production.
The tactic has disrupted filming for Apple series Loot in Beverly Hills and Disney+ series Wonder Man in Hollywood.
Deadline television editor Peter White told KNX News that the goal of the shutdowns is to cost the studios enough money that they come back to the bargaining table.
“They know that they can march all they like, and they can encourage people to honk their horns outside of the studios, and that’s great … but essentially they figured that actually they’re going to need to hit the studios where it hurts, which is in the pocket,” he said.
Despite the threat of disruptions, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said that the strike won’t significantly impact the media company because of the strength of their unscripted content. During an earnings call Tuesday morning, he predicted that “the audience will pivot” from scripted series to sports and news programming.
But some writers are calling his bluff.
“I think that we are shutting down productions this strike in a way that is pretty unprecedented. You didn’t see as much of this happening in ‘07-’08. So it doesn’t surprise me that studios are coming out strong, reiterating how well-positioned they are, because they have been taken off-guard by our presence on these picket lines,” Last Week Tonight with John Oliver writer Liz Hynes told KNX News.
Hynes said the support the strike is receiving from showrunners and other entertainment unions might impact the studios’ bottom lines sooner than they anticipated.
“I think that Netflix was really banking on having Stranger Things in the pipeline, and you see people like the Duffer brothers deciding to shut down production, because they understand writing never stops, even when the cameras are rolling,” she said.
Picketers outside Fox Studios told KNX’s Jon Baird Tuesday morning that they’re willing to ride the strike out for as long as it takes.
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