How did the 2007 writ­ers’ strike change Hollywood?

From the out­side, it can be easy to assume that all the impor­tant deci­sions in Hol­ly­wood are made by the same small col­lec­tion of pow­er­ful men in suits. Recent­ly, new Warn­er Bros. Dis­cov­ery CEO David Zaslav has been flex­ing his mus­cles by imple­ment­ing mas­sive pol­i­cy changes that have fun­da­men­tal­ly reshaped the studio’s strat­e­gy, with show can­cel­la­tions and tax write-offs that have cost thou­sands of jobs and seen projects shelved despite being almost com­plet­ed. It’s the appar­ent law of the land: deci­sions cas­cade from the top down.

How­ev­er, as recent his­to­ry informs us, that’s not always the case. Fif­teen years ago, Tin­sel­town under­went a two-month peri­od of tur­moil that brought the engines of film and tele­vi­sion to a halt. While the exec­u­tives were cer­tain­ly involved, these events were the direct result of action from Hollywood’s rank and file: the Writer’s Guild of Amer­i­ca, an indus­try col­lec­tive made up of two unions (the WGA East and WGA West) which com­pris­es over 20,000 film and tele­vi­sion writ­ers from across the Unit­ed States.

The Guild’s deci­sion to strike from Novem­ber 2007 to Feb­ru­ary 2008 was the con­se­quence of a media land­scape that has been in con­stant flux through­out the 21^st cen­tu­ry. With cru­cial labour nego­ti­a­tions offer­ing the poten­tial for a reprise in 2023, it’s an illu­mi­nat­ing exam­ple of why, and how, ten­sions can come to a boil in the land where sto­ries are made.

As with most labour dis­putes, the issues behind the WGA strike were sim­mer­ing long before action began. In 1985, the Guild had held a strike over frus­tra­tion regard­ing roy­al­ties from the bur­geon­ing home video mar­ket, which added a new rev­enue stream of which stu­dios could take plen­ti­ful advan­tage. The strike last­ed just two weeks and cul­mi­nat­ed in a deal with the AMPTP (the trade asso­ci­a­tion of pro­duc­ers who han­dle bar­gain­ing with Hol­ly­wood unions) which was seen by plen­ty in the guild as sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­ad­van­ta­geous to the writ­ers. As home video devel­oped and tran­si­tioned from cas­sette to DVD, the mar­ket only became more lucra­tive, and resent­ments over the sparse roy­al­ties allot­ted to writ­ers con­tin­ued to build.

By 2007, which hap­pened to be a des­ig­nat­ed rene­go­ti­a­tion year between the WGA and AMPTP, Hol­ly­wood was amidst anoth­er peri­od of tran­si­tion. The DVD mar­ket was still strong, but it had been com­pli­ment­ed by the growth of a new mar­ket: elec­tron­ic sales. A few years before the stream­ing boom would change every­thing again, video on demand, gen­er­al­ly in the form of online mar­ket­places like iTunes or Ama­zon Video, was pro­vid­ing a brand-new out­let for con­sumers to pur­chase film and TV.

Viewed in con­junc­tion with the home video dis­pute of the 80s, it’s easy to see a pat­tern emerg­ing. Every form of new media, whether phys­i­cal or online, pro­vides a way for par­ties to reshape the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mon­ey in the busi­ness. Just about every time the ini­tial deal hap­pens to favour stu­dio exec­u­tives. It’s easy to see, then, why strike action is a con­sis­tent spec­tre in Hol­ly­wood, which always seems to be prepar­ing for, amidst, or recov­er­ing from a peri­od of flux. In a world where entire block­buster movies can be delet­ed from exis­tence for tax pur­pos­es, it’s one of the few instances of lever­age Hollywood’s work­ers have.

If any­one was under­es­ti­mat­ing Hollywood’s reliance on its writ­ers, the 2007 – 8 WGA strike would have giv­en them ample evi­dence to change their mind. The most obvi­ous impacts were on tele­vi­sion, where – with the pipeline jammed up – Amer­i­can net­work TV effec­tive­ly shut down pro­duc­tion for two months. With cin­e­ma, the impact is less imme­di­ate­ly easy to quan­ti­fy. Film pro­duc­tion didn’t shut down dur­ing the strike, in part because stu­dios and writ­ers alike (antic­i­pat­ing the strike) accel­er­at­ed their work in the months pri­or, to pro­duce com­plet­ed scripts before the dead­line. There is, after all, far less writ­ing required for a film script than a sea­son of television.

How­ev­er, that doesn’t quite tell the full sto­ry. Films can shoot with­out writ­ers’ inter­ven­tion but it’s pret­ty incon­ve­nient. Espe­cial­ly (but not exclu­sive­ly) on the biggest block­busters, it’s com­mon Hol­ly­wood prac­tice to issue small new rewrites dur­ing film­ing to take account of new cir­cum­stances, whether that’s infor­ma­tion gar­nered from actors’ per­for­mances or logis­ti­cal chal­lenges that have cropped up dur­ing pro­duc­tion. There are plen­ty of exam­ples of big films, includ­ing the recent – and acclaimed – Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble films, that have start­ed film­ing with­out a com­plet­ed script at all. Oth­ers, like Rogue One: A Star Wars Sto­ry, have brought in new writ­ers to reshape the sto­ry entire­ly dur­ing filming.

With­out Guild writ­ers on set, film pro­duc­tion suf­fered, and the results can be seen in a spate of block­busters which were filmed or in pre-pro­duc­tion dur­ing the strike. Major 2008/2009 releas­es, such as Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fall­en, X‑Men Ori­gins: Wolver­ine and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, were reviled by crit­ics, and in the years since, mem­bers of the pro­duc­tion have spo­ken up about rushed scripts with incom­plete dia­logue that couldn’t be fixed dur­ing film­ing. It’s as good an expla­na­tion as any as to why Ryan Reynolds’ Dead­pool was unable to talk.

The most famous exam­ple of a strike-com­pro­mised pro­duc­tion, per­haps, is the 23^rd James Bond film, Quan­tum of Solace. Rushed into pro­duc­tion after the smash suc­cess of reboot Casi­no Royale, a new draft by Paul Hag­gis was rushed out just before the dead­line. By all accounts, this script was bare­ly suf­fi­cient for film­ing. Daniel Craig, noto­ri­ous­ly out­spo­ken about his issues with his Bond films, revealed years lat­er he had to par­tic­i­pate in nec­es­sary on-set rewrites with direc­tor Marc Forster.

To quote him, ​“a writer I am not”. The result was a fol­low-up that is wide­ly per­ceived as a sig­nif­i­cant step down from Casi­no. Forster lat­er explained the film’s jit­tery, near-inco­her­ent style, claim­ing there were ​“lots of cuts to hide that there’s a lot of action and a lit­tle less sto­ry”. As Craig wrapped up his run as Bond last year, the oth­er­wise nos­tal­gic ret­ro­spec­tives had few kind things to say about Quantum.

His­to­ry serves as the best teacher, though the les­son of the pre­vi­ous writer’s strike is a com­pli­cat­ed one. Like many Hol­ly­wood strikes before it, the 2007 – 8 strike was dogged by pres­sure with­in the indus­try for writ­ers to give in and accept the AMPTP’s terms, and the out­come – while vot­ed through by an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the guild mem­ber­ship – didn’t address all of the issues expressed dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions, such as DVD resid­u­als. Fol­low­ing events indi­cate that the fun­da­men­tal ten­sions between work­ers and stu­dios haven’t abat­ed. In 2017, the WGA came with­in hours of strik­ing over unequal prof­it shar­ing with the stu­dios, while oth­er unions have fol­lowed their exam­ple – atten­tion turned to the tech­ni­cal and craft work­ers of Hol­ly­wood last year as their guild, IATSE, came close to their own walk­out over poor work­place standards.

It’s a reflec­tion of yet anoth­er tran­si­tion­al moment for Hol­ly­wood with evi­dent par­al­lels to 2007. Recent dis­putes have focused on the game-chang­ing effects of stream­ing on the indus­try, as tele­vi­sion sea­sons become short­er and rar­er with mega-bud­get shows such as House of the Drag­on and The Rings of Pow­er pro­duced on two-year cycles. Over on the film side, a shift towards stream­ing has only been accel­er­at­ed by COVID, with tra­di­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­els and their estab­lished prof­it dis­tri­b­u­tion upended.

In stu­dio board­rooms, lead­er­ship is shuf­fling rapid­ly to reflect new pri­or­i­ties, and the abrupt can­cel­la­tions of WB’s com­plet­ed films includ­ing Bat­girl and the Scoob! sequel indi­cate just how sig­nif­i­cant the after-effects of such changes will be. In this febrile moment, chat­ter has already begun about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a strike in the spring of 2023 as the WGA gears up for a sure-to-be tem­pes­tu­ous round of nego­ti­a­tions with the AMPTP.

Strikes are an inher­ent­ly con­tentious issue, but what can’t be doubt­ed is the lever­age writ­ers have over the indus­try: some of the biggest stars of the moment, from Ben Stiller to Robin Williams to Jack Black, joined the pick­et lines in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the strik­ing writ­ers. If issues flare up again next year to the point of anoth­er walk­out, only one thing is for cer­tain: every­one is going to know about it.