Edition 39: The Strike
The WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike seems to be coming to an end now (it all seems to depend on a WGA meeting tomorrow), or who knows; once you read this it might be already over. But what kind of damage has it actually caused? Three months of strike don’t really go without consequence. We hear daily reports on how much money the movie industry has already lost this year.
I have to make clear that I support the writers (I’m trying to be one myself so I have to really), though I also understand the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers). The main point of argument is the compensation for online content, so when they’ve made a TV show or movie and it’s also streamed on the internet. Of course the writers want to be paid for this but no one knows how the internet market will develop.
It’s a time where developments go really quickly, you can’t actually know how much money the internet content will make over the years. So it’s understandable that the studios were very hesitant, though pretty much paying them nothing at all is a bad idea when going into talks. At some times the strike got a bit silly though, there were some AMPTP and WGA mud slinging matches.
The real victims right now aren’t the big actors though, they have plenty of money to live of, it’s the production crews that are suffering. Studios responded to the strike by firing the “common†man working in their studios. So in that regard it will take some time until the industry recovers, some people have left to get other job because they need to eat. That’s not really what this site is about though, so lets take a look at what consequence it has had on our featured actresses in particular.
The strike pretty much meant that production halted on movie projects and TV shows. The damage to movies is actually limited because it sometimes takes years before a movie gets from script to actually finished movie. Except for projects that have shorter production times, we’re talking popular projects that require a fast production time before it becomes unpopular again. In our case there’s only one clear victim: Disney.
Shooting for High School Musical 3 and the Hannah Montana Movie should almost have started already but they won’t. Simple reason is that their scripts aren’t done yet, they’re in the rough draft stage and they still need some work. It will probably mean that High School Musical 3 will be delayed until late 2008 while it’s very likely that the Hannah Montana Movie will be delayed until 2009. They don’t want both movies in theatres at the same time so even if they did rush them they’ll have a hard time fitting them into 2008 without them interfering with each other.
So in that regard it’s only a problem for people like Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale and other High School Musical Stars. For other movie projects our actresses are featured in it’s not really a big problem. They’re more long term projects and the ones that are planned for this year are already done or are already in the shooting stage so those should be released on time.
For TV it’s a bigger problem, the production time on TV shows is a lot shorter. Several TV shows have already run out of episodes, some even weeks after the strike started. Main victim of that was probably Kaley Cuoco when The Big Bang Theory stopped production just weeks into the strike (Not that it’s a show that would be missed on TV, I’m not too fond of it but that’s beside the point). Who knows when that will go back into production, it will be one very short season that much is certain.
Again Disney has to deal with it, production on a lot of their Disney Channel shows stopped. They seem to be trying to stretch their seasons until they have new episodes, new episodes of Hannah Montana have slowed to under one new episode per month. They’re done shooting season two but they probably want to stretch it until they can start production on season three (and the movie). Not that Miley Cyrus has had much trouble with it, she simply extended her concert tour by a month. Co-star Emily Osment has been keeping busy shooting a TV movie for Disney, so they’ve been doing fine. Though Hannah Montana fans are upset with the lack of new episodes.
For some shows I don’t actually know how many shows they have on reserve, for example Medium. It didn’t start its season until 2008, they probably produced most of the shows in advance but not all. Sofia Vassilieva has once stated that they get their scripts about two weeks before shooting so the time between writing ans production is very short. That also means that once the strike is over they can go back into production quite quickly again, depending on whether they can get all their support staff back.
One of the other most notable victims is Heroes, they’ve only put out eleven episodes this season. They planned to do the season in two halves which probably will save them, seeing they can go into a third season without real continuity problems. It does mean that people like Hayden Panettiere haven’t been really busy so far, even though she signed on to a new movie project, that just hasn’t started shooting yet.
That’s another thing with the strike, pilot season is coming up as they call it. It’s when production companies make pilot episodes of new shows, based on those episodes they decide whether to take a show into their programming or not. The main problem right now is; there are no pilot scripts so there’s nothing to shoot. It might very well mean that there will be no to very few new TV shows for the 2008-2009 season. It’s also good news for people that fear their favourite show might be cancelled though, the studios will be more likely to renew existing shows.
So that’s good news for people that enjoy shows like Medium (Sofia Vassilieva) and One Tree Hill (Sophia Bush and others); they’ve been renewed on a season to season bases in recent years. The strike might have improved their chances of renewal considerably. It also means that a lot of the crappy new shows (somehow all new sitcoms that came along this TV season were horrible to complete crap) might get renewed as well. So it might very well be a very boring 2008-2009 TV season, just a good thing that the movies coming out this and next year haven’t been influenced a lot.
I just hope that something like this doesn’t happen again, a lot of behind the scenes people have suffered from the strike and will probably need some time to recover from it. Three months without income is a disaster for any family with a normal income. Good thing the DGA (Directors Guild of America) has already agreed on a deal so they won’t be striking. However the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) is coming to an end and they have similar issues with the AMPTP as the WGA had, so lets just hope it doesn’t lead to another strike.
