Am I the only one who feels very…off about the end of the writer’s strike?
Here’s what I mean.
1. The tentative deal met only last for a short amount of time, three years. So my thinking is that when the strike is over and the WGA and studios meet again, the studios are gonna try pulling their shit once more and another strike is going to go on, leading to another settlement. I can just see Hollywood pulling a PR stunt where they in the long-term try to play off that the WGA are a bunch of "whiny babies who are never satisfied" or some shit like that. Call me a pessimist, but I feel some long-game BS stuff is being set up here.
2. The actors have no contract. To me, this is coming off as the studios making a con that's deliberately weakening the solidarity between the writers and actors because one group is still striking and the other no longer can.
a. It makes the actors' strike suddenly so much weaker because their biggest co-strikers are no longer striking, and I'm worries that with those weakened forces, studios are going to use that as a means of more efficiently stopping the actors' attempts at getting a fair deal. They can starve them out faster and eventually force them to takes those AI deals.
b. I feel like the studios are trying to instill an "f-you, got mine" mentality that's going to further divide them as the writers get back to work while the actors keep striking. I mean, I don't doubt that the writers are going keep pulling for the actors to get a fair deal, but it's going to be a priority that needs to be juggled in the face of getting back to work, and I worry that there is going to be an inevitable resentment built up that was completely calculated by the studios to happen.
c. In the public eye, there are more actors that are prolific and wealthy than writers. Now, obviously, both are paid terribly and treated worse, but by that I just mean that it's a lot easier for the general public to name ten actors than it is to name ten writers. With the WGA, there was this clear underdog dynamic between the writers and the studios, making it very easy for people to take the writers' side in the strike. However, so much of the court of public opinion thinks that actors are rich and famous, and I worry that having them alone is going to risk a lot of the general public turning on the actors because of that incorrect presumption.
Obviously, the guilds leaders are smart, and I really want to believe that these things and others have been thought through before a writers' deal was reached, but there's a lot about this deal that doesn't feel right to me.
I can't be the only one whose thinking of these things and worrying, right?!
Hey, @niel-gayman and @wilwheaton, given that you two are industry professionals, can I get your takes on this, please? I don't want to risk spreading misinformation, but I just can't let go of my apprehension for this agreement and don't want to stay silent about these worries.
