Like many other industries, Hollywood envisions a disruptive future in the face of artificial intelligence, with the first casualty being the scriptwriting sector—the bedrock of the entire Hollywood creative process. After all, this realm forms the foundation of all original content in the cinematic world. Yet, despite being a domain that prizes originality as its most significant competitive edge, the scriptwriting industry is rife with clichés and entrenched conventions.
As we know, current generative artificial intelligence excels at innovating in a "Frankenstein-like" manner, creating from a vast base of existing information. Therefore, the officially launched fertile AI product, ChatGPT, at the end of 2022, became the straw that broke the camel's back in the ongoing Hollywood labor dispute. Faced with an increasingly challenging environment and the potential disruptive applications of generative AI in television and film, scriptwriters found it hard to sit still, resulting in Hollywood's largest-scale strike in 60 years.
Forethought for the future brings immediate worries. The reasons behind the scriptwriters' strike are long-term concerns related to artificial intelligence, as the massive impact of AI is expected to unfold in a few years. In contrast, the immediate problems that scriptwriters must confront include the industry's response to the pandemic's impact, changes in box office dynamics after the pandemic, the decline in content demand for series production, and the shift in focus for streaming services—a set of immediate worries.
Immediate Concerns for Scriptwriters
As a symbol of the highly mature and developed American entertainment industry, Hollywood traditionally negotiates new salary standards and contract frameworks every three years, with the Writers Guild of America (WGA) representing the interests of the 11,000 creatives contributing scripts and ideas to Hollywood.
In 2023, negotiations for salary standards and contract frameworks were again on the table. However, studio bosses were only inclined to offer a little leeway for improving the compensation levels of scriptwriters. In response, scriptwriters, angered by the ongoing exploitation of their income and the sharp contrast with the streaming boom during the pandemic, rallied behind a strike, marking an unprecedented show of determination. An overwhelming 97.85% voted in favor of the strike.
Behind this anger is the further squeezing of scriptwriters' income, a stark contrast to the streaming boom during the pandemic.
In the era of television, American dramas comprised 20-24 episodes per season, released weekly to retain paying subscribers for cable television. However, streaming platforms, led by Netflix, introduced a new binge-watching phenomenon, releasing entire seasons at once and creating a surge in viewership, rapidly adding new subscribers—a practice commonly known as binge-watching.
This shift doesn't necessitate as many episodes per season, resulting in streaming series having far fewer episodes than their television counterparts—usually only 8-12 episodes, half of a typical TV series. For example, the first and second seasons of "Stranger Things" had only 8 and 9 episodes, respectively—even the widely acclaimed "Squid Game" comprised just nine episodes.
The new platform and a new series structure inevitably lead to new challenges and, arguably, "harsher" working conditions for scriptwriters. Crafting the core idea and overall framework is the most challenging aspect of creating a series.
In the television era, a single story outline could generate over twenty episodes; in the streaming era, the same outline yields only ten episodes. Under the same workload, the intensity of core creative work doubles, yet scriptwriters' compensation fails to see a corresponding increase.
To exacerbate the situation, Hollywood has further exploited existing scriptwriting models by introducing the "highly efficient" collaboration model of Minirooms. Previously, after finalizing the story's core and overall framework, lead scriptwriters would organize a team of 7-8 scriptwriters to craft scripts for each episode as needed.
However, in the Miniroom model, with fewer episodes to produce, only 2-3 scriptwriters participate in writing scripts. In some cases, even before the production of a series begins, the scriptwriters in the Miniroom have already hastily completed all script-related work, receiving lower wages than regular scriptwriters and swiftly moving on to the next Miniroom.
In the streaming era, another critical right of creators is under threat—the revenue share from series reruns (residuals). In the past, during the television era, the "long-tail revenue" from series viewing was primarily satisfied by the videotape/DVD market, allowing scriptwriters to earn from the distribution of these media. However, with most people now watching long-released series on streaming platforms, scriptwriters don't benefit from these "rerun" revenues. The reason is attributed to the rapid development of streaming.
When streaming was first included in the WGA's agreement with producers fifteen years ago, the industry widely perceived it as "television played on computer screens," with few people predicted to consume it genuinely. Therefore, until the strike occurred, scriptwriters did not receive a share of the "rerun" revenue when streaming platforms aired series. Consequently, in this strike, "securing residuals from streaming playback" became one of the core negotiating issues.
With creative work intensity doubling, wages stagnating but decreasing, and rerun revenue completely disregarded, Hollywood scriptwriters face this current predicament. According to data from the WGA for the first quarter, the average compensation for scriptwriters and producers has decreased by 4% over the past decade. Considering inflation, this average income has fallen by 23%, almost a quarter.
Everyone is well aware of the increase in the cost of living in major U.S. cities during the pandemic. In short, the changes in the working methods of the streaming era and the wage structure are no longer sufficient to sustain the basic livelihoods of scriptwriters, making a collective strike an inevitable result.
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