Screenwriters Worry That Film Concerns Are Taking a Back Seat in Hollywood Writers’ Strike
Since the WGA strike began, TV writers have been front and center, with late-night shows canceled, picket lines outside studios and questions lobbed at executives at upfronts about the strike’s impact on their prime-time lineups. But film writers who joined in the strike effort say they face the same struggles, and some worry they’re being left out of the conversation.
Some flashpoints in the tense negotiations that led to the strike, like the use of mini-rooms, are specific to TV. But film screenwriters have seen their pay stagnate, too, the Writers Guild of America said. Many film genres have become more viable as streaming titles than as theatrical releases, leading feature writers to work on projects that often have less favorable pay scales.
Streaming has been a double-edged sword for screenwriters, said Zack Stentz, co-writer of “X-Men: First Class.” It has given screenwriters a new avenue to get films greenlit and released at a time when the arthouse box office has largely struggled and only a small handful of films outside of tentpole blockbusters or low-budget titles enjoy box office success. But the pay for those movies, particularly in residuals, is typically lower.
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Stentz said he has been a beneficiary of streamers’ willingness to greenlight films that theatrical distributors might not: His kids sci-fi film, “Rim of the World,” was produced and released by Netflix in 2019 on a $23 million budget.
“The problem,” Stentz said, “is that the residual pay structure that you get for streaming is considerably lower than what a writer would get in residuals for a theatrical release that does reasonably well.”
Doing the two-step
And similar to how mini-rooms deprive TV writers of script and producer fees, the WGA contends that the flood of films for streaming has also come with writer deals that don’t guarantee a two-step pay scale. Such a scale grants writers 50% of the first “step” of their payment when they sign on to write a project, and then the other 50% when the script is delivered to the studio. The second step guarantees a smaller payment for at least one rewrite.
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“The one-step deal that we started to see more of in the early 2000s has become increasingly problematic for writers because they face immense pressure from producers and execs to do additional steps for free,” explained Michele Mulroney, screenwriter and WGA negotiating committee member. “A one-step deal frequently becomes two or three steps, lasting for weeks or months with the writer receiving zero compensation for these additional steps.”
“Only screenwriters are subjected to the unreasonable pressure of delivering on the very first attempt,” Mulroney continued. “It’s unrealistic and perpetually exposes them to free work demands in the name of getting the draft ‘right.’”
For years, WGA has pushed to lock in the two-step pay scale, with its current proposal to studios requiring a second step for any production that pays less than 250% of the minimum rate. For a non-original screenplay, this would be approximately $150,000.
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Writers that work beneath this threshold would also have the first 50% of the first step paid at the start of the project with the rest paid weekly. This would be done to ensure that writers aren’t exploited for multiple rewrites before the script is handed in to the studio.
Both of these proposals were among several rejected without a counteroffer by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which instead offered “meetings to educate creative executives and
producers about screenwriters’ free work concerns.”
“Producers and execs don’t need to be educated about free work — they invented it! Although some of the free work requests do come directly from producers, they also come from studios and execs,” said Mulroney. “Frankly, our employers can no longer turn a blind eye to these outlandish free work demands that wreak havoc on any kind of financial planning for our members.”
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The AMPTP didn’t include two-step feature pay in its public response to the WGA’s proposal after the strike began, but it did note that it agreed with the WGA to a 46% increase in streaming residuals for all projects, including films, that started in 2022 and which writers are only now starting to reap the benefits of. The AMPTP didn’t immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on the two-step issue.
Residuals are once again a point of contention in this round of talks, as the WGA wants streaming features with a budget of over $12 million to receive the same terms in initial compensation and residual pay as theatrical releases. The AMPTP did offer a counterproposal, but called for only a 9% increase in initial compensation for streaming films with a running time of more than 96 minutes and a budget of more than $40 million, with no changes to residual pay.
The WGA has made it clear that they will only return to the negotiating table when AMPTP provides a counteroffer on all elements of its proposal, including feature writing. But some screenwriter members who spoke to TheWrap said they are pessimistic that the results for feature writing will be any different than past negotiations, with their needs left unresolved in the final tentative agreement.
“I don’t want to sound like it’s an us-versus-them situation with TV writers. I get it, they’re getting royally screwed too,” said one screenwriter who asked to remain anonymous. “But past cycles have just left me feeling like we’re not the priority on the feature side, and while I’m a hundred percent behind this strike I’m not expecting a lot of change.”
According to the WGA, only around 25% of its working members write exclusively for films, with the rest primarily working in episodic TV. Stentz pointed to the rise of streaming and the explosion in demand for new shows as a reason why the balance of film and TV went from 50/50 at the turn of the millennium to skewing more towards the latter.
Combined with the more immediate impact that the strike has on TV production as opposed to films, which get affected on a case-by-case basis depending on what stage of production they are on, and it’s easy to see why TV writers’ issues get more attention during a strike among the public and sometimes at the negotiating table as well.
But Mulroney said she isn’t giving up hope that 2023 will be different and that screenwriters can earn solid gains.
“Our leadership is seeing great solidarity across all sectors of our membership, where we all care about one another’s issues,” she said. “Guaranteed second steps, weekly pay and improved compensation and residuals for movies made for streaming are priorities in this negotiation. We have a broad agenda we are very serious about and that absolutely includes these core screenwriter issues. The days of the AMPTP brushing aside features concerns needs to end.”
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