LOS ANGELES (KNX) – The clock is ticking and a strike is looming for the Writer’s Guild.
The guild’s three-year contract ends Monday and if an agreement is not reached with the TV and movie producers union, a strike will start.
Dominic Patton, senior editor at Deadline, told KNX News that negotiations are “far apart.”
“There are issues of money, there are issues of pay scheduling, there's issues of transparency,” he said.
The other issue is streamers.
The writers said streaming has changed the economics of Hollywood and they’re not getting paid enough.
Patton said when it comes to streamers, it is a one-and-done for the writers.
“They buy you what you do and they take it,” he explained. “You don't really get any information about what your show is doing. So if you're trying to renegotiate going further, you're kind of in a blind spot.”
Jonathan Handel, an entertainment lawyer, said the writers are ready to walk.
“What they're saying in the studios and the streamers, if you're going to spend billions of dollars, building systems and profit-making machines built on content that we create, we need at least a fair piece of the revenue that comes in,” he said.
In a statement to CNN, the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, which represents Amazon, Apple, CBS, Disney, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony, and Warner Bros. Discovery, said it wants to reach a “fair and reasonable agreement.”
“The AMPTP companies have approached these negotiations with the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority,” it said.
“We are all partners in charting the future of our business together and we are fully committed to reaching a mutually-beneficial deal.”
If a deal is not reached, the strike will begin at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Patton said the impacts of the strike will take effect pretty quickly.
“…the first thing you're going to see shut down are the late-night shows,” he told KNX News.
“They‘re gone…you'll probably see SNL (go) pretty quick if this thing goes more than a couple of days.”
The Writer’s Guild voted to authorize a strike on April 17. The last time the guild went on strike was in 2007 and occurred over the course of 100 days.
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