The Writers Guild of America strike turns one week old on Tuesday, and already a lot has happened. Late night chat and sketch shows have gone dark. (Unless they’re on Fox News.) Movies and shows have been put on hold. Pete Davidson gave striking writers some (excellent) pizza. What hasn’t happened is any progress in getting Hollywood honchos to negotiate with their demands. One big time filmmaker predicts they’re not in any rush to anyway.
Judd Apatow talked to Variety over the weekend, and he speculated that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, comprised of the bigger studios and streamers, are letting this drag out on purpose.
“I think they probably already know what they’re going to bend on,” Apatow told the publication. “I would assume they already know what date this is going to end. They’ve probably been planning this for years.”
He continued:
“I always think that whatever happens, they could have figured it out already. When these things conclude, you never go, ‘I understand why it took that long.’ It’s never something so inventive, and groundbreaking, that you think, ‘Oh, people needed to go to war for months over it.’ It’s always a very obvious position.”
He added that “what’s scary about it is that there is a solution but I’m not sure that all of the business interests are interested in getting to it quickly.”
The WGA strike began last Tuesday after negotiations between them and the AMPTP broke down. Among the former’s concerns are fair pay for writers, who often struggle to make ends meet while working on shows everyone watches. They also want better regulation of AI tech, which threatens their industry, and many others besides.
(Via Variety)