The Hollywood writers’ strike arises from the entertainment industry’s unsustainable expansion fueled by the Covid era that resulted in a great streaming experiment with every major brand having its own Netflix. With the unsustainability of this growth, studios and streamers press writers for longer and less predictable hours, with fewer long-term rewards, even as corporate suits seek to make certain writerly duties obsolete using A.I. technology. The writers’ strike demands appear reasonable, but striking scribes could potentially lose by wringing concessions around pay and working hours as it could result in a larger collapse in the number of scripted shows that Hollywood puts out. The strike provokes considerations about what the conflict means for the art that justifies the commercial wrangling in the industry.
The strike creates two narratives: one narrative sees an opportunity to reconsider the Marvel-era fixation on franchises, reboots, and “presold” storytelling and break up vertically integrated corporate behemoths, separating production and distribution once again. The other narrative believes that the corporate strategy evolved because it is supplying what audiences want, which is superhero-sweatshop content.
As a viewer and writer, the author would like the strike to create a Hollywood system that existed around ten years ago, that was before the streaming takeoff when downsides of the special effects franchise era in cinema were partly compensated for by the emergence of deeper, richer, and more ambitious television. The author asserts that the streaming expansion initially provided a surfeit of small-screen ambition, but it feels like it is spreading creative talent too thin or working it too hard, resulting in thin imitations of previous decade’s anti-hero dramas.
The strike-and-aftermath scenario could bring a resolution to the spread-too-thin problem from a viewer’s perspective, where writers’ room talent is better compensated and more concentrated, and showrunners have fewer empire-building opportunities but deliver better shows. Though this outcome is not what the union hopes for because it would mean fewer writing jobs. Another darker scenario is that the contraction could combine with an intensified television franchise imitation, resulting in more blockbuster television and losing some of peak TV’s serendipitous experiments. As a result, writers could end up with a fairer share of an industry that pivots further from creativity, resulting in a lose-while-winning scenario for this strike.
