this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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I saw a thread about this article on Twitter recently, and I thought it was an interesting take that Hollywood can't actually afford to wait out the strike since they are all on a quarterly deadline (profit wise). If they run out of content, their earnings will dip and it would only take a few months to look really bad for the CEOs.
Here's the thread in question if you want to read it yourself
The counter to this is the belief / rumor that studios have been hoarding unproduced scripts for years to prepare for exactly this scenario. One of the big complaints of the WGA is getting rid of "mini rooms" where a few writers put together scripts for an entire season, but those writers are not retained throughout the rest of production.
It would be very easy to use this system to intentionally create scripts that only a few people know about and don't need to be paid in the future if that project eventually moves forward.
That would be an extremely short sighted move (which has obviously never stopped major corporations before).
One of the major problems from the last writers strike was that no WGA member (which often included show runners) could be on site for filming or make script adjustments. This means that frequently actors need to do their own rewrites which are often of questionable quality, and they don't like to do (since it's essentially being a scab). I think producers can also do rewrites, but I'm not sure they'd be much better at it.
One of the primary reasons Quantum of Solace was such a rough movie is Daniel Craig was doing rewrites himself in the evenings since it was filmed during the strike.
The obvious solution would be to do everything in their power to follow the script to the letter but oftentimes it can't be avoided. Some lines might not land the way they read on paper, and some sets cannot accommodate action the way it was initially scripted. All of these would require script rework.
All this to say that as long as the WGA strike is going, almost anything being filmed will be of notably lower quality.
As I pointed out at the start, this may not be enough of an incentive for studio heads to relent and pay their writers a living wage; but it'll certainly hurt the bottom line soon enough.