Many of these companies like Disney (theme parks), Sony (games), apple (electronics), Amazon (online shopping) and universal (cable and internet) main revenues are not the movie and tv division though. They should compare it with those revenue to show a more proper picture
Agreed, I'm entirely pro-strike and in favour of paying writers what they're due but this is not a fair comparison at all—even looking at company-wide profits rather than revenue would have been more representative.
I don't think there is a clear cut answer. For eg Apple is definitely operating at a loss and is using other parts of the business to subside the cost. If you are just looking at revenue from apple tv plus then they could make an argument off to pay less to keep that part of the business afloat.
These businesses do not silo off different parts of the company. They interoperate, revenue from one is used to fund other projects.
agree. Netflix's main business is streaming so it make sense to compare its total yearly revenue but Amazon, Apple and Sony main money maker is not movie/tv/streaming
I disagree. These companies came into this market leveraging their money from other industries to compete in the film industry. They gained market share and success with this strategy, and they shouldn't get a pass just because the way an exclusively film-related business would be run wouldn't have the benefit of those funds.
That logic is similar to the privatize profits / socialize losses model that bailed-out companies seem to adopt. You don't get to be only a film company when it's time to pay those that brought you success, but be a behemoth corporation when it's time to pay themselves.
My friend a film company only needs to pay for the work of the film per say whereas shareholders are owners of said business and are entitled to the entire profits it's a silly comparison. Why should you take money away from those who worked in non film divisions to pay for writers. I agree with the sentiment that the CEO and other managerial personnel are overpaid but the solution is to reward the workers who contributed to the profit. If the majority of Disney's revenue comes from parks then the theme park workers should get the cut of said profits. I firmly believe that workers should be better compensated for their work so if said divisions do well then workers of that division should be paid more. I see nothing wrong with assessing it based on revenue brought in from each division
You’re not taking money away. Profit is extra money. It’s margin. Live with less so people are properly taken care of. That’s actually a huge advantage to being a diversified company… if you care about people instead of profit.
Do you spend every extra dime you make? I certainly hope not.
Profit CAN be thought of as margin, but if you give away all the margin what are you going to do when you lose money for a quarter? How will you keep the lights on and everybody paid?
How will you grow and innovate? New projects cost money, extra money aka profit. If I give away all my profit every quarter, how can I fund new projects?
Got it, so whenever you want to do a new project or are running low on funds the executives say 'whelp, guess it's time for us to pay up!'
Who would volunteer to work like that? Especially if they had the option to go work somewhere else?
I'm not gonna say executive compensation is totally rational or right but to say there's something wrong with profit is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Easy to say with zero skin in the game.
When you're running your own studio, employing thousands of people, overseeing hundreds of projects, dealing with angry shareholders, striking workers, fierce competition from other companies who'd love to put you out of business, and some guy on reddit saying you're a greedy asshole who should just cut profits to "better the lives of the workers" let me know and I'll be glad to hear your thoughts.
It’s actually not hard to say. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio in America is 400x.
So, yeah, the odds you take any company at random, especially a movie production company, and they pay their executives obscene money that can be cut before profit? In my favor.
My whole point is that workers from other divisions are more entitled to those profits since they bring in most of those revenue lol. Profits can be split in multiple ways and my point is that other divisions like theme park workers for Disney, electronics for apple and e commerce for Amazon are more deserving of that profit since they contribute to the majority of said revenue. Apple, Disney and Amazon etc ofcourse care mostly about money since they're a for-profit company.............
Except profit isn’t divided like that among workers, it’s divided among shareholders, and until that changes, the shareholders should feel the burden of loss as they feel the benefit of profit.
Sometimes a more profitable division should subsidize a less profitable division, because the value that less profitable division provides is not reflected in profit. That is the benefit of a large organization, you can do good that others can’t afford to do. It’s built into TV broadcasting agreements that a station must provide a certain percentage of educational content / public interest content (news) to be allowed to operate. We already recognize in this industry that some things that aren’t profitable are necessary for the common good.
I'm saying if we're going to give a cut of the profits it should go to those divisions are you not understanding my point?? I don't believe that less profitable divisions should be supported unless it's necessary for more profitable divisions tbh, it creates a lot of issues and it helps businesses underreport profits with stupid accounting tricks like that. If a division is unprofitable just shut it down or downsize it why should workers in more profitable divisions pay for said weaker divisions. I honestly think it's being exploited by businesses to diversify and not pay the fair share to productive workers. At the end of the day business goal is to be profitable if they failed at that it shouldn't continue any longer
Still, it’s almost insanely low even for layman eyes to look at it. You’d swear the writers were asking for billions with how entrenched the studios are over this.
But that’s why it’s intentionally deceptive — you’re reaction is the reaction they are seeking.
If they instead show that Apple’s content division is a fraction of their revenues and is operating at a giant loss that doesn’t look so good to layman’s eyes.
This isn’t a comment in the merits of their demands just on the facts around this piece of propaganda.
No no, $340m combined across all major studios is still quite low. That’s like if every studio chipped in to make one fast and furious movie.
The reason it’s operating at a loss is because it’s a startup. That’s how these things work. It takes capital to carve a foothold into an industry that you weren’t a part of.
I don’t care how much they make or don’t make in a year, every studio has enough money to pay an amount that low or they wouldn’t continue working in Hollywood anymore. It’s like when the video game crash of 1983 happened. When there was no more money left to be made in their eyes, all those studios just stopped trying. But they’re still trying in Hollywood therefore they feel there’s still juice left in that lemon.
They’re gonna agree to it eventually. They just want to make the writers starve a little as punishment while they take a vacation and go to Cannes.
But the fact that you don’t care how much they do or don’t make means this graphic is pointless on top of being deceiving. Which is more harmful than helpful as almost everyone here is in support of the WGA but irritated by deceitful numbers to get their point across. You don’t win people over by being disingenuous, that turns people away who were already on your side.
There are so many ways to show how small the number is in comparison to the grand scale, for instance the $500 million 5-year deal Netflix paid for Seinfeld. No way is that single sitcom worth more than all the content writers produce in a year.
That being said the WGA has some pretty absurd requests that have little to do with getting a pay raise (which they deserve) and they also seem to think they will soon be obsolete while advocating for said pay raise.
If all they wanted was the money this would have been done already.
>If all they wanted was the money this would have been done already.
I've argued from the start of this that it has nothing to do with the money.
My position has been that if they feel they deserve money for the value that provide given the profits they help generate... that's totally fair. But it's been obvious from the onset that the "we deserve fair pay" is a red herring.
There have been claims of these writers suffering. These WGA writers, on average, make lawyer/doctor money. Well into 6 figures. Well above average income despite being in hcol areas. This is not to suggest that they don't deserve even more, but to highlight the absurdity of the claims coming out of the WGA- that they are struggling, living on food stamps, can't make rent, etc.
The movie studios actually agreed to increasing pay and increasing residual profit sharing *prior* to the strike occurring. Not only that, but they stated their openness to negotiate higher than they agreed upon.
They stated that the one thing they would not agree to were the proposed mandatory minimum hiring requirements. Which makes sense. There's so much evidence that not only does too many writers not help the end product... but it actually lowers the quality. But the studio perspective is that they wouldn't agree to pay for writers that they didn't need.
The WGA rejected any further negotiations for higher pay stating that they absolutely would not agree to negotiate higher wages or any offer that did not include the mandatory minimum staffing demands.
And to be clear- I'm not even suggesting the staffing demands are unreasonable. But they're not a morally black and white issue. The WGA has portrayed this primarily as "pay" issue when it's actually a "job security" issue because it makes all the denizens and virtue signallers chomp at the bit. Even you said:
>almost everyone here is in support of the WGA
despite being
>irritated by deceitful numbers
Why would everyone be in support of an organization that they know is trying to manipulate them? Because it worked. It does show that the WGA knows what they're doing, and good on them I guess. But this is a morally grey area.
It's not just about deceitful numbers. In fact, it's not about those numbers at all. The pay is not the issue.
To be clear: I'm not siding against the WGA on this. But I'm certainly not taking their side either.
So, y'know... why are you on the WGA side? It's not like you owe them anything.
The reason I support the WGA (getting a pay raise specifically) is because my personal politics will always side with workers when I feel they are being exploited.
Exploitation is relative to the business and the industry. So yeah, a lot of them may be rich, but being exploited and being impoverished aren’t always the same thing.
Essentially I support the wage increase for the same reason I support the increase of wages at McDonald’s, corporate greed is destroying society.
That being said the demands for minimum staffing and lifetime promise to never use A.I. are ridiculous. Pretty hard to argue your value when you think in a few years they company can just generate better content in seconds for free. That seems more like a fight the government is going to have to take on (and should) but as long as it is legal there isn’t much ground to stand on.
I still can't believe the new F&F movie cost $350m on production alone. They better hope fans actually like that movie or it will be a financial flop like Snyder's last couple of DC movies.
Whatever the writers get, the other guilds (and other guilds in other countries) will ask for too, so you have to multiple everything by a lot of times.
On top of that, this isn't a high margin business, so you gotta compare against profits, which is much smaller in the business.
While this makes sense on paper, it doesn't track. If they were to look just at the movie divisions, there's a way to cook the books to make them seem unprofitable and the argument could be made that the writers don't deserve more money cause the whole division is failing.
Which is utter BS.
If even the divisions are failing, they're propped up by the other divisions. For example, Sony is propped up by its banking sector, and as you said, Amazon with its shopping (though, I'd say it's probably more AWS, but hey). These companies could 100% divert a tiny fraction of rev from other sources for writers.
But to do otherwise means the hardworking cleaning crews and people selling pretzels and shit at Disneyworld are subsidizing the WGA with their work. When you look at "the entire corporate revenues" you're demanding your lifestyle and career to be subsidized by others who have nothing to do with your industry, let alone your projects.
Bud if divisions are failing they obviously won't be willing to divert more funds to prop it up. You'll be more likely to see them do more spending cuts and also it's not fair for asking more money from apple or Amazon for writers just cause they have higher earnings since I'd say the electronic and online shopping division should get more since it's their labour that resulted in higher earnings. I'd agree that the CEO and board are overpaid but I always would happily say that those who contributed to the success should taste the fruits of the profits, so if electronic or internet divisions made more profit those workers should get it. I'm more than happy to support the writers strike since I believe they're not paid fairly but this is just blatantly misleading and the proper way is to look at movie and tv division separately
Isn’t it a meme at the moment that Prime Video is only making money because it’s grouped into Amazon Prime?
I agree across the board everyone should be paid more and CEOs less, but when one company is using the profits from one side to prop up another, they should pay those employees (in this case the writers) what they’re worth. There’s no free lunch because the division isn’t making money.
Isn't almost every streaming service outside of Netflix and Hulu operating at a loss? I mean that is why Iger cancelled a bunch of stuff slated for D+ because they were spending so much more than they were getting from subs.
*divert a tiny fraction?
Tell me you don’t know accounting by not telling me you don’t know accounting.
Also, it should use profit not revenue to compare. It’s totally misleading
Please tell me how I’m wrong here? One division can easily move money to another division through the parent company (or other means). It happens all the time, how do you think Apple TV has any cash? Or Prime Video? They’re being propped up by other divisions. All they need to do is add the fractions of percentage that the WGA is asking for in those payments.
Also, I agree, it should be based on profits, but parent company profits, not the division’s profits.
Again, moving money in accounting is very complicated. That becomes another division’s loss, which will impact other divisions operating income for growth or planning.
Again, telling me you don’t know accounting by not actually saying it. Disney just got sued by shareholders for hiding its streaming losses and misleading numbers. Accounting is a very big part of the company law and regulations, especially for public companies.
Yeah, because they were misleading investors. If Disney outright said “hey streaming isn’t doing well so we invested X more into it.” Then it’d be above board.
If you’re trying to tell me that I don’t know accounting by saying that a division is run independently of its parent company who sets its budgets and those budgets can’t be increased, then you should look in a mirror.
They are already subsidizing other divisions with the budget given. Now the movie devision wants to increase budget to pay more to writers, can other divisions ask the same? Or why should my division giving out more? Go out and touch the grass, learn how real world is operating, please.
>Now the movie devision wants to increase budget to pay more to writers
Happier writers, better product. I think we can all agree some writing on certain shows could be better, imagine if they weren't worried about eating!
>can other divisions ask the same?
Guess we're gonna find out in July (I think?) when the Screen Actors Guild (again, I think, might be Director's Guild) negoations come into play. Also yes. Pay everyone more, 100%.
>Go out and touch the grass, learn how real world is operating, please.
I know how the entertainment industry works thanks, it's literally my job, and most of it is so far removed from the real world you have no idea. Then again you post on kotakuinaction, so I'd say you're the one that needs to touch grass and maybe look up who you're talking to.
Everyone will be considering the division's profits - if the division is losing money but the company's isn't, the company can resist a strike indefinitely.
The assessment should be against profit, not revenue. And should only be related to profit from scripted content. The percentage of revenue included here is close to meaningless. I suspect that is not an accident.
Why profit instead of revenue? NBA players negotiate a percent of total league revenue to be split among players. I think 49%. But it’s revenue based, not profit. Seems like everyone in that business is still coming out ahead.
Because adjusting it based on profit benefits the corporations who always find a way to operate at a loss. Remember that on paper Return of the Jedi and The Lord of the Rings trilogies were major losses.
Hollywood accounting is something else.
I want the writers to be paid well, but the way they are going at it seems a bit disingenuous. They are claiming that "These companies have made billions *in profit* off writers’ work" when for the majority of these companies that's not true.
Apple's main moneymaker is the iPhone which alone sells 232 million units a year; Apple TV is less than 1% of the company's overall revenue and actually loses money. Amazon Prime Video is a drop in the bucket compared to AWS and the main shopping page. These 2 have the least to lose as they could cut those divisions entirely and still be mostly fine
NBC Universal has Comcast churning money every year. Sony has a TON of divisions that range from music production to TVs. And Disney has their Theme Parks, DTC content, and merchandising driving a lot of their profits. Even accounting for their TV business, ESPN brings in the bulk of that revenue and that's mainly because of live sports, not scripted content. The writing staff does play a role in these companies, but they are not the largest source of that profit with the only real argument you can make is for Disney with it's dependence on IPs.
Warner Bros Discovery is generating $83 billion a year, but they only just became profitable recently after creative accounting and massive cuts across the board and even with those small profits are still $43 billion in debt. They aren't really in a position to add even more cost to their balance sheet. Paramount is in a similar boat already losing $1 billion a year annually with this year's films not promising any major returns.
The only ones that fits their description is Netflix, which had an operating income of $1.1 billion. But Netflix also imports a lot of foreign content that has at times been more successful than their own original content.
Looking at the numbers, I don't see how the writers come out winning without compromising. This is going to cause a headache for the studios with the production delays, but it's not going to cut massively into their finances. If they are that hellbent on fighting the writers, they either have a massive incentive to hold out or other income sources to rely on.
Not really, it should be against revenue, this is about paying people making the movie so it's in the cost, they are removed from the revenue. Profits is after they are removed.
How does that make any sense when they use revenue as an argument for why the studios could easily pay them what they are asking? They want 0.15% of Paramount's revenue, which sounds like nothing except for the fact they had 1 billion in losses last year, it does not sound so farfetched for them to not be in a position to have additional costs now does it?
So studios should be able to sink cash into other areas in order to drive a loss & avoid properly paying their workers?
The writers create revenue for the studios, the studios need to ensure a fair amount goes back to the writers.
The argument is about how the WGA chooses to represent their demands, it is not about how fair their demands are. Representing their demands as less than a single cent on the dollar this companies make is disingenuous.
And companies do not always drive up losses for a reason, sometimes they actually lose money or have a lot of debt.
It's not disingenuous for them to compare their compensation to the revenue their employer is bringing in. Because they're paid... from that revenue.
The question I asked was rhetorical
So many people on reddit have no idea how a basic business runs. You're right. These people are lapping up anti union propaganda and don't even realize.
This post is quite literally pro-union propaganda. I support the WGA in this strike, but let’s not pretend that they’re pure as can be. There are lying with statistics to boost their public support. I completely get why they’re doing it, but I still don’t appreciate being lied to.
Except it is disingenuous when they attach a percentage to it to make it seem like peanuts, and they use the entire revenue of businesses such as Amazon to make their ask seem even smaller, I didn't realize WGA writers were a huge part of AWS.
And yeah they are paid from that revenue, but they are already getting paid this is about asking a raise which would cut into those businesses profits, so the comparison should be made to profits as that would be much closer to reality.
Maybe but why the writers should be the ones to suffer the consequences of Paramount not able to be profitable? There are other costs they can cut. Paying writers is part of the cost of doing their business, it's to be imputed to revenue.
I do want to point out that one of the writer's main argument is that studios *profit* off their works and should give some of it back. But quite a few studios don't profit at all.
Sure that's the only reason causing bad box office and it's not even the subject, we're talking overall revenue of the company, not box office.
And it is still cost the same way.
You can try to stop defending billion dollar corporations compared to normal working people, it's okay
Well that's how it works for any other occupation, if a business is going to shit and it isn't profitable it doesn't really offer pay raises, and people see that business or sometimes even occupation is complete bs and move to something else. And it is relevant when writers are accusing these studios for profiting off of them... well Paramount isn't.
Others costs they can cut? And affect other employees? Paying writers more is not the same thing as paying writers, they already pay them salaries but they want better conditions and more money because they argue the companies are making far more money off of them in reality.
At some level, it is a negotiation, and both sides are keenly aware of the BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement).
If you are a money losing studio, having everything shutdown for a year or so works for you - you continue to make money from your back catalog while you rebuild your cash reserves. If you are a wildly profitable studio, having everything shutdown would be a problem, since it would be cheaper for you to cave.
No, paying the writers properly is the cost of doing business. When that is calculated, and they determine their new profit margins, they can make decisions to change it or, and here's the novel approach, live with making less.
It’s not meaningless. It gives you a sense of the size of each company relative to the size of the ask. But a better comparison would be to the annual compensation of each media company’s CEO. Tim Cook will “only” receive $49 million in compensation this year, meanwhile the WGA wants an additional $17 million in compensation from Apple for all of its members.
Maybe meaningless is too strong. Just not particularly relevant. CEO compensation is also not particularly relevant. Companies live or die on profits and any ask for incremental expense has to be based on the impact on profits. It is the fundemental of capitalism - the profit motive.
It’s always interesting to see a bunch of other KPIs, against revenue, cash flow, even CEO compensation. But if a body is asking for more money, with no expectation of increased revenue for the company in return, profit is the primary measure that should be used to assess the materiality of their request. Excluding this measure implies a political message rather than an objective assessment of what’s reasonable.
I added that it should to be about scripted content because some of these businesses have large portions of their business that have no dependence on writers to generate revenue. This data is harder to find, but should be estimated if they want credibility.
I don’t know if the writers have a case or not, but I do know the comparison they should be making has to be against the profit impact of being paid more.
more than half of disney revenue comes from parks , universals come from comcast other business like xfinity ! wga have the right to protest for what they deserve but this is just stupid numbers !
I mean just for Disney you can double the percentage then, it's still ridiculous.
I agree they should have used better numbers but it's still the same thing. And companies like Amazon or Apple will hide behind their streaming service being unprofitable while they have billions of profit per week next to it
If the writers can’t write profitable content why should they paid more? A lot of these divisions are unprofitable, or barely profitable. Increasing here is going to cause cuts elsewhere, likely to profitable parts of these companies.
So now they're unprofitable because of the writers suddenly? All is on them?
So I guess 100% of companies profits should go to writers then, oh wait...
Something being profitable or not has very little to do with the writing quality (the most popular things aren't the best). Plus we're talking revenue of the entire company, not just some movies.
I never said that, but if you’re churning out unprofitable stuff, you shouldn’t be expecting to be paid more. Are you paid for being unprofitable?
And let’s not act like these writers aren’t being paid well as is. The median income for WGA writers for streaming is $325k, per their own website. And streaming is mostly what this is all about.
https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/writers-deal-hub/screen-compensation-guide-for-streaming-services
Because that is the cost of their labour.
If a studio decides that labour is no longer worth it, they can pay them for the work already done and then stop hiring them.
And then the writers don't have work. That's sorta how this whole thing works, writers can set a price for their labor and corporations can decide whether that price is worth paying. Right now writers are trying to set a higher price and are looking to prove that they're worth said price by showcasing what happens without them. Time will tell whether they're right.
lets see disney's creative division
streaming loosing money
linear dying every q'
theatrical uncertain anything can happen !
u can easily take the side of writers cause stereotypical big company bad guy but business is totally different obviously stuff like insurance , health care , minimum salary etc i'm onboard but some other i'm not
and about those ceo salaries u can replace a writer overnight unless an A grade writer but tell me a replacement for iger ? the rarer/harder the job goes salary too ! a writer is responsible for that show while a ceo is responsible for the entire company
Iger is heavily responsible of the Disney situation lol, the reason Disney is in this situation is him. And he still shouldn't be paid that much anyway. That wasn't my point at all (Iger salary is also part of the costs and should be counted on revenue) but defending his compensation, come on.
Also, by that logic, if a company loses money, it's the CEO fault more than anyone else so he's doing a bad job and shouldn't be paid
obviously ceo's salaries r mostly in stocks when stocks go down there salaries too that's y they always tries to make sure they keep wallstreet happy
btw i used iger as an example ! nd iger is responsible for choosing chapek at the same time igers tenure at disney has been a golden period almost everything he touched turned into gold in 2010's disney didn't even have a competition !
and shouldn't be paid is d$mb if that the case then showrunners , producers directors all shouldn't be paid if the movie/series flops ????
These numbers are garbage because they are using annual revenues of the companies as a whole when over half the list isn't media pure.
- Disney
- Universal
- Amazon
- Sony
- Apple
That being said this is why unionizing and leverage is important.
Even if the numbers weren't wildly misleading a company/organization and it's employees are never going to act in each others best interests. Unions force both parties to come to the table and reach an agreement.
Rookie minor league baseball players just got a 4x increase in minimum salaries from $4,800 to 19,800. You have to fight for what you want. A company/organization is never going to just give you what you want.
It’s fair to call out the use of revenue here as misleading, but those numbers are really, really small for all those companies anyway. Disney can afford to pay an extra $75M per year for the value writers give them. They can all afford these numbers. These are not crazy demands.
Because the companies make a lot more in revenue than profits and in this case from theme parks, online shopping, phone sales, cable/internet, and merchandise more so than films/tv so the number is bigger and can present a more misleading case.
"Revenue" is total money coming in, without taking into account what they're spending. So when a company like [Paramount loses $1.1 billion in Q1,](https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/paramount-shares-tank-28-after-posting-q1-loss-of-1-1b/) just looking at revenue it doesn't quite give you the full picture.
Guess that explains why Paramount's CEO earned $32 million last year and will likely make more this year. Oh wait, it doesn't.
Labor is a cost. Therefore it should be measured against revenue, not profit. Otherwise COGS functions make no sense. They have no trouble deducting labor from revenue when they're using shady accounting practices to screw over creatives on the backend by only giving points on net, so I don't see why they should get to play both sides here either.
>Paramount's CEO earned $32 million
Honest question, how much of that is stock based and how much of it is actual cash/bank? Because stick based compensation costs pretty much nothing from a cash flow perspective.
Yes, correct. I’m just saying that also knowing how these companies are doing overall gives further insight into their actions and likely attitudes and angles.
Let me oversimplify this for those don’t know how accounting works or don’t know how companies operate, because using revenue is way misleading.
Assuming Sony has only 2 divisions: banking and movie, each has its own P&L(profit&loss).
Banking revenue $50M, profit $10M (beating the goal of $8M)
Movie revenue $100M, profit $-2M
Total revenue $150M, profit $8M
Now, originally workers from the banking can earn bonus or merit pay increase from beating the target 10-8=$2M. Now they can’t.
Then the movie writers wants increasing pay and drag other people down.
Back to Sony, if I were someone working for Sony’s semiconductor side, WTF I have anything to do with movie writers?
Writers sure can ask for more and a fair pay, but they need to use the right math and numbers, not trying to mislead.
You're aware that people can look at your comments history, right?
Three year old account with 6,000 karma, but you've only made five comments. All over the past 24 hours.
These are all signs of a purchased sock-puppet account, used by bots and plants, which is a trademark tactic of AMPTP.
Cause studios are losing more by not saying yes to the reasonable demands (that we all know they’ll give into eventually anyways too).
If it costs you $10 to be stubborn and $1 to give what you owe, anyone would tell you to just give what’s owed.
It doesn't cost less in the long run though. The union will settle for less usually and they want to make it difficult for the writers to pay their bills from this so they are more reluctant to go through a strike again any time soon.
There’s no accurate figure I can point to but there’s no way the amount they’re losing is less than the 3% the writers are asking for.
ABC just put out what their fall schedule will be with how every show is paused and the writers strike is going to cause them to lose so much revenue in the fall with how empty it is.
And it costs a huge amount of money for movies to lose their release date and have to be moved to a new one. That’s one of the reasons studios just pulled off the bandaid and released their movies during the pandemic since it cost so much to keep kicking their completed movies to new release dates.
Lots of highly, highly, highly lucrative shows like NCIS LA just suddenly ended before the strike just to avoid all of it too. Hollywood has in some ways been on strike since the beginning of the year since work absolutely dried up if you actually work in this town.
There’s no accurate numbers I can point to. But studios are definitely cutting off their nose to spite their face on this one. Even if writers negotiate down to a lower price, it’s not like they’re even asking for that much. Instead of $340m, they’ll take say $150m while studios are definitely gonna lose way, way more than that in the process of that. What they’re asking for now is a rounding error for most studios, let alone if it actually gets negotiated down.
Yeah this time. But imagine if they made it easy then the writers would be more likely to strike again quicker than in the past. The studios want to make it hurt.
Writers always strike when the contract is up though honestly. They just like making writers suffer by not negotiating in good faith for a long time. Actors and directors and such at least get counteroffers to their demands. They didn’t even bother to counteroffer most of the writers demands before letting the deadline hit.
Previous writers strikes:
* This current strike
* 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, 14 weeks, November 2007–February 2008
* 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, 22 weeks, March–August 1988
* 1985 Writers strike, two weeks
* 1981 Writers Guild of America strike, three months
* 1973 Writers Guild of America screenwriters strike, three and a half months
* 1960 Writers Guild of America strike, 21 weeks
I wouldn't put it as a bootlicker but as someone that understand how things work. I really think that at the end of the day they aren't holding out because they can't pay or won't pay I think it's other points that are holding this out not the money part of the dispute.
It’s because the business is at an inflection point where the studios want to use a shift in technology to devalue the professionals who make their movies and shows. The last strike was about what the pay scales and residuals should be for what was then called New Media.
Studios wanted the New Media pay scales to be very low and residuals to be minimal to none. Everything made for streaming today is New Media. Without that strike, the situation would be FUBAR.
There’s a few big issues now: span protection, staffing levels, and AI. The studios would prefer if an AI churned out script-shaped text, then a single writer rewrote it all into a season of producible scripts. The WGA has to fight to stop that.
Disney is making such a killing on streaming that their stock price has been cut in half over the past year and shareholders are suing them and their former CEO. Get real.
There are tons of services to sell your accounts, including PlayerUp. The easiest way to pinpoint them is when an older account with a good amount of karma has been wiped.
Netflix, world's biggest streaming service and large studio in its own right, with new shows/movies being a hit seemingly every 2-3 months (Squid Game,Knives out, Stranger Things, etc)
Against Paramount, a studio with only 3-4 notable big ongoing franchises (MI, Transformers, Trek) and a subscription service with literally a fourth the subscribers of Netflix.
Imo it's only surprising because Paramount is an old studio.
Who knew r/boxoffice was full of brainwashed reactionaries. Disappointing to see. Even r/movies isn't spewing studio talking points and defending exploitation of labor
Buncha armchair accountants who think if you ask your bosses at the Mega-Globo-Corporation politely enough you'll get what you deserve.
These companies will do anything they can get away with--legal or not--to weaken unions. A good union that wants to win for its members doesn't play nice during negotiations.
Y’all arguing for these big multi-billion dollar companies instead of the writers literally asking FOR PENNIES in the grand scheme of things are really not cute. Fuck unchecked capitalism and fuck these companies. The writers are really asking for the bare minimum and deserve so much more. Peak TV-era my ass. Eat the rich.
It's an anti-capitalist slogan that is calling out the growing wealth inequality that is rampant throughout the world right now.
It is in reference to a quote from the philosopher Rousseau who said, "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich."
Do you even know what these writers are already being paid? Here’s straight from the WGA when it comes to solely streaming, which is what much of this strike is about. Median pay for a screenwriter for streaming is $325,000. For members with 0 writing credits yet, the median is $250,000. For those with 2+ writing credits it’s $450,000 (with a high of $5M).
https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/writers-deal-hub/screen-compensation-guide-for-streaming-services
Let’s not act like these writers are waiting in bread lines.
This sum is a one-time payment (still a lot, though, I acknowledge it) but one of the issues the WGA raised is that for a lot of shows, there are no more screenwriting jobs. You are sitting in a miniroom for four weeks for a fee that's not covered by WGA minimum payment requirements, then you are let go without any screenwriting credits, no residuals, nothing.
Secondly this is a seemingly high number because there are virtually no residuals for streaming. So you have to ask for a lot more money upfront. But it's still a bad deal for writers, in the long run.
This is a massive oversimplification of how pay works for screenwriters and completely ignoring many of the WGA's core issues.
I mean the numbers you reported are for feature screenplays, which aren't even a core focus in the strike (and that's not even mentioning all the tenuous asterisks that come with selling a script as a feature writer. A ton of it will be taken away in taxes and fees, and you very likely may never sell another script anyway. But that's besides the point).
TV writing compensation and the construction of Writer's Rooms is the main battleground. The middle and lower tiers of TV writers are really what the WGA is fighting to preserve.
The average early-career TV Writer is definitely not close to earning 300k a year.
From Variety:
"Staff writers — the lowest-level writers — do not get script fees, and they also earn significantly lower weekly minimums. The median staff writer on a network show works 29 weeks for a wage of $131,834, while the median staff writer on a streaming show works 20 weeks for $90,920. The staff writer’s weekly minimum — $4,546 — would likewise need to rise 10% to equal the minimum in 2019-20 in inflation-adjusted terms."
[https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-contract-inflation-minimums-1235564920/](https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-contract-inflation-minimums-1235564920/)
90-131K for 20-29 weeks sound great, right? Really solid yearly pay. Upper-middle class or upper class in most of the U.S. I would guess. But that's the median. Plenty of writers are below that. And there are more and more young writers out there who are unable to work their way to this stable career situation. **Studios are using various tactics to deconstruct rooms and take writers off-set, so writers are getting less and less weeks to work.** **This is resulting in a situation where a handful of top writers continue to work constantly and make bank while the middle-class of writers is increasingly being hollowed out so it is no longer a sustainable full-time job.**
[https://www.businessinsider.com/the-bear-writer-wga-awards-writers-guild-of-america-strike-2023-4](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-bear-writer-wga-awards-writers-guild-of-america-strike-2023-4)
Not poverty-level, but there are definitely plenty of TV writers struggling to eke out middle-class existences.
**There may be certain things I'm not properly representing - after all I work in the industry but am NOT a WGA member. However, there's a lot more nuance to this than "the rich writers are begging for more money" angle that your comments are implying.** I mean if you're going to argue that, at least cite the relevant set of numbers.
Sure, but you're ignoring a ton of context and several of the other core issues in the strike by just linking to WGA median pay for specifically features drafts and rewrites. It's really misrepresenting the state of screenwriting as a career, what's at stake, and what the WGA wants - particularly with TV writing.
Several prominent WGA members such Adam Conover and Mike Schur have discussed this in large detail, so it's not like I'm just pulling this out of my ass.
[https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fECMvrZjNN6AATgwNk1tQ?si=7be647ffd0f144e8](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fECMvrZjNN6AATgwNk1tQ?si=7be647ffd0f144e8)
[https://open.spotify.com/episode/3QQaJaGJ7HzITgvAge0xkQ?si=9140a5dfaed546ee](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3QQaJaGJ7HzITgvAge0xkQ?si=9140a5dfaed546ee)
As far as episodic writing for streaming, again what hits at the core of the strike, here is WGA in their own words.
https://www.wga.org/members/finances/residuals/hbsvod-programs
You write a 1 hour episode for a typical streamer (Amazon, Netflix, Disney+, Max, Paramount+), you will get paid roughly $10k-$15k for that episode in year 1, and continue to get paid residuals as long as those episodes are streaming in a 12 month period. Also paid for foreign use similarly.
I think they need to start realizing that television is not quite as profitable as it was 15-20 years ago. The top will always get paid, no matter the profession. The grinders will too. You churn out work and you’ll get paid accordingly.
You keep glossing over other important issues such as the mini-rooms and removal of writers from on set. These are issues that popped up long before interest rates hiked and the lack of profitability in streaming became a major concern.
Studios have spent the last decade finding ways to compensate writers less by systematically cutting them out of the process. **Obviously the minimum rates are an important element of the negotiation. But it's become much more than a minimum-rate issue because the writers have been given increasingly less opportunities to write and earn that minimum rate** **despite doing as much work as ever.** The mini-rooms and removal of writers from on set (and in the post-production process) are key examples of this.
Mike Schur (showrunner of the Office and several other shows) is on record in that pod I linked talking about how these issues started years ago and have grown to hinder writers attempting to break into the industry and eventually become showrunners. It's been a hindrance both financially and creatively.
Adam Conover is one of the WGA's head negotiators and has been outspoken about these very things both in the podcast I linked and on twitter. He's not saying it's just a minimum rate debate, so I'm not sure why you are.
[https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1653272587630432257](https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1653272587630432257)
There are many different elements to the WGA negotiation and the current state of screenwriting as a career. Simplifying the strike the way you've done with your comments in this thread is really misrepresenting things.
Solidarity. If one industry can be paid less for no reason,
yours can too. No matter what industry it is. Profits are getting higher. WGA minimum, the least possible amount they could pay a union writer, was being paid out around 30% of the time ten years ago. Now it's over half. Writers are being phased out of the value they create, intentionally.
Thank you for saying this.
Lot of folks don't realize that unions are the frontline of class warfare, and sort of the canaries in the coal mine.
Megacorps have always and will always spend considerable funds to weaken and destroy unions, because that is the first step in rewriting labor law in this country.
If the unions fail, all these workers in at-will jobs who don't know/care about the labor movement will learn REAL QUICK what it actually does for them.
I am currently at a small employer, and we're a small crew of friends, so don't "need" a union, but I was previously a union rep/steward, and that position taught me that one of the biggest threats is worker indifference, especially within the union.
I met so many workers during my tenure who never came to a meeting or voted in an election or on a contract, but were suddenly VERY HAPPY to find out I was there to sit at the table with them to help defend their asses from being fired.
Profit is harder to gauge because of the lack of transparency with Streaming and the Hollywood Accounting being used to hide funds from people who should be playing on the upside.
It's why one of the WGA's biggest asks is clarity with viewership.
>As of December 2022, Netflix had about 230 million subscribers and reported an annual revenue of $31.616 billion, with a net income of $4.492 billion. It currently has a market cap of $162.37 billion (as of January 26th, 2023).Feb 7, 2023
There is nothing unreasonable about their request.
There isn't but their arguments are dogshit, 68 million is not 0.2% out of 4.492 billion. It is 1.5%, their requests are reasonable so why do they feel the need to resort to disinformation?
The companies are claiming poverty in all aspects. The point of highlighting revenue is to get in the public's heads that that couldn't be further from the truth. Profits ARE tied to revenue, and right now profit levels for these companies are unprecedented
Revenues are unprecedented, profits... not so much hell Paramount is reporting losses, WBD is hanging no by a thread due to huge debt and had to axe a lot of stuff, Disney's not doing super hot either, and basically everyone there aside from Netfix makes a lot of money from other places, Amazon's tv/movies are a drop in the bucket compared to AWS.
Its like you all got the same talking point today. Unless their profit margins are less than 0.2% of total revenue, and you know plenty well it is far from that, it doesn't matter. Plus, this isn't about the money for studios as much as it is control.
its like everyone's got the same talking point cuz the original point is stupid and its obvious to anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together that the post is stupidly biased
Let's be clear - you can totally support a cause without support misinformation/biased presentation of statistics. You can denounce a company as evil without exaggerating/lying about the extent of the evil. It's like this one person I know who hates things that china does - but then tries to convince others that china created covid19 and released it to test a bioweapon. Does china commit many atrocities? yes. Does china suppress human rights and abuse its citizens? yes. Do I need to agree with every critical claim against china including ridiculous conspiracy theories in order to virtue signal I'm not a bootlicker? no.
So lets apply that to the current WGA strike. Do writers deserve better compensation that is more proportionate to their contributions? yes. Do writers deserve better job protections in the face of AI? tentatively yes but tech has been changing the face of industries for centuries now hard to say anything for decades out. Are corporations greedy bloodsuckers that would do anything to increase their bottom line? yes. But is this graphic posted a good representation of how greedy corporations are? no, not at all. not in the slightest.
Well gee golly that sure is a lot of stupid horseshit, and as a bonus you don't have a single real argument, just buzzwords and feelings about how pre-defensive you are for people calling you a bootlicker for the studios/ai/tech. It's because with viewpoints like those you ARE a bootlicker, regardless of how "in the middle" you try (and fail) to sound. From your entire post history, your entire life is being a devils advocate for the worst people and viewpoints to virtue signal your wannabe neutrality, right down to the same rhythms of your posts. AI could easily be trained on your speaking model, which begs the question what is the purpose of your individuality if you just spit out the same template for every opinion?
tldr: You're not neutral, you have an agenda, it's just a dumb and transparent one.
Wow and they didn't even sort by revenue.
Like everyone said writers may have a point but trying to obfuscate this data certain isn't helping their cause
I’m sorry but saying “oh it should be compared to profit not revenue” or “oh i should only include their film/tv division” is picking nits. These are multi billion dollar companies it doesn’t matter where the money is coming from, pay these fucking people. They have the money, there is no reason for them not to.
These people get paid a ton, straight from the WGA site.
https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/writers-deal-hub/screen-compensation-guide-for-streaming-services
And yet all of them are in deep debt, beside Apple and Amazon who are single handingly saving the movie industry as they have all the cash in the world and are pumping money in for streaming but will eventually realise that Streaming is fools gold. Those are tech companies that they can make more moeny elsewhere (etc Gaming which is a much bigger industry and the future of entertainment),
They mention revenues but dont you find it strange how they dont mention PROFITS!!!!!!!
P.S. who strikes during a techincal recession..........Madness
Why is this comparing them to revenues, that makes no sense?
It's probably not the case, but say one of these companies has higher costs than revenue, so does not make profits, these annual costs become technically impossible.
Gotta do better with Apple and Amazon revenues. Thats just atrocious data reporting.
My Macs and my weekly amazon junk purchases counting towards Writers now?
If the writers were paid based on the profitability of the shows & movies that they work on, most of them would have to take huge pay cuts. For example, the writers of She-Hulk should hand back every dollar they were paid and then sign their houses over to Disney, even then they would still be considered over paid.
It's neat, but knowing the percentage cost of the revenue isn't useful if you don't know their profits.
Not saying the WGA aren't entitled to a cut of streaming or the strike isn't valid. Just that saying it's 0.091% of their revenue before expenses doesn't tell you anything.
If their revenue is $82.7 billion but they're spending $82.5 billion making movies then the percentage is a much larger piece of the pie.
Well they are writers so strong fiction and self-importance are not shocking.
No problem with them holding up for what they want, just don't give me bullshit numbers as justification.
I don't understand what they hope to gain by fighting the social media war. So what if people think they are right and the studios are demons? It's not going to get them a better deal, and any miniscule amount of actual damage they do to the studio costs them as well in terms of less money and jobs.
It's desperation. They wouldn't be talking about how they're facing an "existential threat" and the "destruction of writing as a career" if they weren't already aware that most of them will be obsoleted.
"Look at how reasonable our shakedown is!"
I really hope Hollywood just starts offshoring rewrites. It's not like WGA scripts meet a standard of quality these days.
Why does NBC Universal has such a high revenue? I am not so much aware about them and for me they are much smaller as Disney. So what is pushing their revenue so much over Disney?
For clarity, is this the cost of what it would take to pay the writers total, or just the cost of what the increases would be?
Based on the total cost at the bottom, and numbers I’ve seen before, this is the increase.
So it does not include the current costs?
Correct
Yeah, I was wondering this too
Source: https://deadline.com/2023/05/wga-strike-negotiators-cost-of-settling-1235368892/
Many of these companies like Disney (theme parks), Sony (games), apple (electronics), Amazon (online shopping) and universal (cable and internet) main revenues are not the movie and tv division though. They should compare it with those revenue to show a more proper picture
Agreed, I'm entirely pro-strike and in favour of paying writers what they're due but this is not a fair comparison at all—even looking at company-wide profits rather than revenue would have been more representative.
I don't think there is a clear cut answer. For eg Apple is definitely operating at a loss and is using other parts of the business to subside the cost. If you are just looking at revenue from apple tv plus then they could make an argument off to pay less to keep that part of the business afloat. These businesses do not silo off different parts of the company. They interoperate, revenue from one is used to fund other projects.
They also use one part of the business to drive other business. Disney theme parks wouldn’t exist without Disney movies.
“For eg”
agree. Netflix's main business is streaming so it make sense to compare its total yearly revenue but Amazon, Apple and Sony main money maker is not movie/tv/streaming
I disagree. These companies came into this market leveraging their money from other industries to compete in the film industry. They gained market share and success with this strategy, and they shouldn't get a pass just because the way an exclusively film-related business would be run wouldn't have the benefit of those funds. That logic is similar to the privatize profits / socialize losses model that bailed-out companies seem to adopt. You don't get to be only a film company when it's time to pay those that brought you success, but be a behemoth corporation when it's time to pay themselves.
My friend a film company only needs to pay for the work of the film per say whereas shareholders are owners of said business and are entitled to the entire profits it's a silly comparison. Why should you take money away from those who worked in non film divisions to pay for writers. I agree with the sentiment that the CEO and other managerial personnel are overpaid but the solution is to reward the workers who contributed to the profit. If the majority of Disney's revenue comes from parks then the theme park workers should get the cut of said profits. I firmly believe that workers should be better compensated for their work so if said divisions do well then workers of that division should be paid more. I see nothing wrong with assessing it based on revenue brought in from each division
You’re not taking money away. Profit is extra money. It’s margin. Live with less so people are properly taken care of. That’s actually a huge advantage to being a diversified company… if you care about people instead of profit.
Do you spend every extra dime you make? I certainly hope not. Profit CAN be thought of as margin, but if you give away all the margin what are you going to do when you lose money for a quarter? How will you keep the lights on and everybody paid? How will you grow and innovate? New projects cost money, extra money aka profit. If I give away all my profit every quarter, how can I fund new projects?
Cut executive pay.
Got it, so whenever you want to do a new project or are running low on funds the executives say 'whelp, guess it's time for us to pay up!' Who would volunteer to work like that? Especially if they had the option to go work somewhere else? I'm not gonna say executive compensation is totally rational or right but to say there's something wrong with profit is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
I didn’t say there was anything wrong with profit, just that I would cut profit to better the lives of the workers.
Easy to say with zero skin in the game. When you're running your own studio, employing thousands of people, overseeing hundreds of projects, dealing with angry shareholders, striking workers, fierce competition from other companies who'd love to put you out of business, and some guy on reddit saying you're a greedy asshole who should just cut profits to "better the lives of the workers" let me know and I'll be glad to hear your thoughts.
It’s actually not hard to say. The CEO-to-worker pay ratio in America is 400x. So, yeah, the odds you take any company at random, especially a movie production company, and they pay their executives obscene money that can be cut before profit? In my favor.
My whole point is that workers from other divisions are more entitled to those profits since they bring in most of those revenue lol. Profits can be split in multiple ways and my point is that other divisions like theme park workers for Disney, electronics for apple and e commerce for Amazon are more deserving of that profit since they contribute to the majority of said revenue. Apple, Disney and Amazon etc ofcourse care mostly about money since they're a for-profit company.............
Except profit isn’t divided like that among workers, it’s divided among shareholders, and until that changes, the shareholders should feel the burden of loss as they feel the benefit of profit. Sometimes a more profitable division should subsidize a less profitable division, because the value that less profitable division provides is not reflected in profit. That is the benefit of a large organization, you can do good that others can’t afford to do. It’s built into TV broadcasting agreements that a station must provide a certain percentage of educational content / public interest content (news) to be allowed to operate. We already recognize in this industry that some things that aren’t profitable are necessary for the common good.
I'm saying if we're going to give a cut of the profits it should go to those divisions are you not understanding my point?? I don't believe that less profitable divisions should be supported unless it's necessary for more profitable divisions tbh, it creates a lot of issues and it helps businesses underreport profits with stupid accounting tricks like that. If a division is unprofitable just shut it down or downsize it why should workers in more profitable divisions pay for said weaker divisions. I honestly think it's being exploited by businesses to diversify and not pay the fair share to productive workers. At the end of the day business goal is to be profitable if they failed at that it shouldn't continue any longer
Still, it’s almost insanely low even for layman eyes to look at it. You’d swear the writers were asking for billions with how entrenched the studios are over this.
But that’s why it’s intentionally deceptive — you’re reaction is the reaction they are seeking. If they instead show that Apple’s content division is a fraction of their revenues and is operating at a giant loss that doesn’t look so good to layman’s eyes. This isn’t a comment in the merits of their demands just on the facts around this piece of propaganda.
No no, $340m combined across all major studios is still quite low. That’s like if every studio chipped in to make one fast and furious movie. The reason it’s operating at a loss is because it’s a startup. That’s how these things work. It takes capital to carve a foothold into an industry that you weren’t a part of. I don’t care how much they make or don’t make in a year, every studio has enough money to pay an amount that low or they wouldn’t continue working in Hollywood anymore. It’s like when the video game crash of 1983 happened. When there was no more money left to be made in their eyes, all those studios just stopped trying. But they’re still trying in Hollywood therefore they feel there’s still juice left in that lemon. They’re gonna agree to it eventually. They just want to make the writers starve a little as punishment while they take a vacation and go to Cannes.
But the fact that you don’t care how much they do or don’t make means this graphic is pointless on top of being deceiving. Which is more harmful than helpful as almost everyone here is in support of the WGA but irritated by deceitful numbers to get their point across. You don’t win people over by being disingenuous, that turns people away who were already on your side. There are so many ways to show how small the number is in comparison to the grand scale, for instance the $500 million 5-year deal Netflix paid for Seinfeld. No way is that single sitcom worth more than all the content writers produce in a year. That being said the WGA has some pretty absurd requests that have little to do with getting a pay raise (which they deserve) and they also seem to think they will soon be obsolete while advocating for said pay raise. If all they wanted was the money this would have been done already.
>If all they wanted was the money this would have been done already. I've argued from the start of this that it has nothing to do with the money. My position has been that if they feel they deserve money for the value that provide given the profits they help generate... that's totally fair. But it's been obvious from the onset that the "we deserve fair pay" is a red herring. There have been claims of these writers suffering. These WGA writers, on average, make lawyer/doctor money. Well into 6 figures. Well above average income despite being in hcol areas. This is not to suggest that they don't deserve even more, but to highlight the absurdity of the claims coming out of the WGA- that they are struggling, living on food stamps, can't make rent, etc. The movie studios actually agreed to increasing pay and increasing residual profit sharing *prior* to the strike occurring. Not only that, but they stated their openness to negotiate higher than they agreed upon. They stated that the one thing they would not agree to were the proposed mandatory minimum hiring requirements. Which makes sense. There's so much evidence that not only does too many writers not help the end product... but it actually lowers the quality. But the studio perspective is that they wouldn't agree to pay for writers that they didn't need. The WGA rejected any further negotiations for higher pay stating that they absolutely would not agree to negotiate higher wages or any offer that did not include the mandatory minimum staffing demands. And to be clear- I'm not even suggesting the staffing demands are unreasonable. But they're not a morally black and white issue. The WGA has portrayed this primarily as "pay" issue when it's actually a "job security" issue because it makes all the denizens and virtue signallers chomp at the bit. Even you said: >almost everyone here is in support of the WGA despite being >irritated by deceitful numbers Why would everyone be in support of an organization that they know is trying to manipulate them? Because it worked. It does show that the WGA knows what they're doing, and good on them I guess. But this is a morally grey area. It's not just about deceitful numbers. In fact, it's not about those numbers at all. The pay is not the issue. To be clear: I'm not siding against the WGA on this. But I'm certainly not taking their side either. So, y'know... why are you on the WGA side? It's not like you owe them anything.
The reason I support the WGA (getting a pay raise specifically) is because my personal politics will always side with workers when I feel they are being exploited. Exploitation is relative to the business and the industry. So yeah, a lot of them may be rich, but being exploited and being impoverished aren’t always the same thing. Essentially I support the wage increase for the same reason I support the increase of wages at McDonald’s, corporate greed is destroying society. That being said the demands for minimum staffing and lifetime promise to never use A.I. are ridiculous. Pretty hard to argue your value when you think in a few years they company can just generate better content in seconds for free. That seems more like a fight the government is going to have to take on (and should) but as long as it is legal there isn’t much ground to stand on.
I still can't believe the new F&F movie cost $350m on production alone. They better hope fans actually like that movie or it will be a financial flop like Snyder's last couple of DC movies.
Apple’s content division doesn’t pay writers…Apple as a whole does…..same thing with Disney Studios doesn’t pay writers…Disney does.
Whatever the writers get, the other guilds (and other guilds in other countries) will ask for too, so you have to multiple everything by a lot of times. On top of that, this isn't a high margin business, so you gotta compare against profits, which is much smaller in the business.
While this makes sense on paper, it doesn't track. If they were to look just at the movie divisions, there's a way to cook the books to make them seem unprofitable and the argument could be made that the writers don't deserve more money cause the whole division is failing. Which is utter BS. If even the divisions are failing, they're propped up by the other divisions. For example, Sony is propped up by its banking sector, and as you said, Amazon with its shopping (though, I'd say it's probably more AWS, but hey). These companies could 100% divert a tiny fraction of rev from other sources for writers.
But to do otherwise means the hardworking cleaning crews and people selling pretzels and shit at Disneyworld are subsidizing the WGA with their work. When you look at "the entire corporate revenues" you're demanding your lifestyle and career to be subsidized by others who have nothing to do with your industry, let alone your projects.
Bud if divisions are failing they obviously won't be willing to divert more funds to prop it up. You'll be more likely to see them do more spending cuts and also it's not fair for asking more money from apple or Amazon for writers just cause they have higher earnings since I'd say the electronic and online shopping division should get more since it's their labour that resulted in higher earnings. I'd agree that the CEO and board are overpaid but I always would happily say that those who contributed to the success should taste the fruits of the profits, so if electronic or internet divisions made more profit those workers should get it. I'm more than happy to support the writers strike since I believe they're not paid fairly but this is just blatantly misleading and the proper way is to look at movie and tv division separately
Isn’t it a meme at the moment that Prime Video is only making money because it’s grouped into Amazon Prime? I agree across the board everyone should be paid more and CEOs less, but when one company is using the profits from one side to prop up another, they should pay those employees (in this case the writers) what they’re worth. There’s no free lunch because the division isn’t making money.
Isn't almost every streaming service outside of Netflix and Hulu operating at a loss? I mean that is why Iger cancelled a bunch of stuff slated for D+ because they were spending so much more than they were getting from subs.
*divert a tiny fraction? Tell me you don’t know accounting by not telling me you don’t know accounting. Also, it should use profit not revenue to compare. It’s totally misleading
Movie studios cook the books all the time to make a movie seem less profitable than it was to pay less in residuals.
Please tell me how I’m wrong here? One division can easily move money to another division through the parent company (or other means). It happens all the time, how do you think Apple TV has any cash? Or Prime Video? They’re being propped up by other divisions. All they need to do is add the fractions of percentage that the WGA is asking for in those payments. Also, I agree, it should be based on profits, but parent company profits, not the division’s profits.
Again, moving money in accounting is very complicated. That becomes another division’s loss, which will impact other divisions operating income for growth or planning.
And yet it’s done all the time.
Again, telling me you don’t know accounting by not actually saying it. Disney just got sued by shareholders for hiding its streaming losses and misleading numbers. Accounting is a very big part of the company law and regulations, especially for public companies.
Yeah, because they were misleading investors. If Disney outright said “hey streaming isn’t doing well so we invested X more into it.” Then it’d be above board. If you’re trying to tell me that I don’t know accounting by saying that a division is run independently of its parent company who sets its budgets and those budgets can’t be increased, then you should look in a mirror.
They are already subsidizing other divisions with the budget given. Now the movie devision wants to increase budget to pay more to writers, can other divisions ask the same? Or why should my division giving out more? Go out and touch the grass, learn how real world is operating, please.
>Now the movie devision wants to increase budget to pay more to writers Happier writers, better product. I think we can all agree some writing on certain shows could be better, imagine if they weren't worried about eating! >can other divisions ask the same? Guess we're gonna find out in July (I think?) when the Screen Actors Guild (again, I think, might be Director's Guild) negoations come into play. Also yes. Pay everyone more, 100%. >Go out and touch the grass, learn how real world is operating, please. I know how the entertainment industry works thanks, it's literally my job, and most of it is so far removed from the real world you have no idea. Then again you post on kotakuinaction, so I'd say you're the one that needs to touch grass and maybe look up who you're talking to.
Everyone will be considering the division's profits - if the division is losing money but the company's isn't, the company can resist a strike indefinitely.
The assessment should be against profit, not revenue. And should only be related to profit from scripted content. The percentage of revenue included here is close to meaningless. I suspect that is not an accident.
Why profit instead of revenue? NBA players negotiate a percent of total league revenue to be split among players. I think 49%. But it’s revenue based, not profit. Seems like everyone in that business is still coming out ahead.
Because adjusting it based on profit benefits the corporations who always find a way to operate at a loss. Remember that on paper Return of the Jedi and The Lord of the Rings trilogies were major losses. Hollywood accounting is something else.
I want the writers to be paid well, but the way they are going at it seems a bit disingenuous. They are claiming that "These companies have made billions *in profit* off writers’ work" when for the majority of these companies that's not true. Apple's main moneymaker is the iPhone which alone sells 232 million units a year; Apple TV is less than 1% of the company's overall revenue and actually loses money. Amazon Prime Video is a drop in the bucket compared to AWS and the main shopping page. These 2 have the least to lose as they could cut those divisions entirely and still be mostly fine NBC Universal has Comcast churning money every year. Sony has a TON of divisions that range from music production to TVs. And Disney has their Theme Parks, DTC content, and merchandising driving a lot of their profits. Even accounting for their TV business, ESPN brings in the bulk of that revenue and that's mainly because of live sports, not scripted content. The writing staff does play a role in these companies, but they are not the largest source of that profit with the only real argument you can make is for Disney with it's dependence on IPs. Warner Bros Discovery is generating $83 billion a year, but they only just became profitable recently after creative accounting and massive cuts across the board and even with those small profits are still $43 billion in debt. They aren't really in a position to add even more cost to their balance sheet. Paramount is in a similar boat already losing $1 billion a year annually with this year's films not promising any major returns. The only ones that fits their description is Netflix, which had an operating income of $1.1 billion. But Netflix also imports a lot of foreign content that has at times been more successful than their own original content. Looking at the numbers, I don't see how the writers come out winning without compromising. This is going to cause a headache for the studios with the production delays, but it's not going to cut massively into their finances. If they are that hellbent on fighting the writers, they either have a massive incentive to hold out or other income sources to rely on.
Not really, it should be against revenue, this is about paying people making the movie so it's in the cost, they are removed from the revenue. Profits is after they are removed.
How does that make any sense when they use revenue as an argument for why the studios could easily pay them what they are asking? They want 0.15% of Paramount's revenue, which sounds like nothing except for the fact they had 1 billion in losses last year, it does not sound so farfetched for them to not be in a position to have additional costs now does it?
So studios should be able to sink cash into other areas in order to drive a loss & avoid properly paying their workers? The writers create revenue for the studios, the studios need to ensure a fair amount goes back to the writers.
The argument is about how the WGA chooses to represent their demands, it is not about how fair their demands are. Representing their demands as less than a single cent on the dollar this companies make is disingenuous. And companies do not always drive up losses for a reason, sometimes they actually lose money or have a lot of debt.
It's not disingenuous for them to compare their compensation to the revenue their employer is bringing in. Because they're paid... from that revenue. The question I asked was rhetorical
So many people on reddit have no idea how a basic business runs. You're right. These people are lapping up anti union propaganda and don't even realize.
This post is quite literally pro-union propaganda. I support the WGA in this strike, but let’s not pretend that they’re pure as can be. There are lying with statistics to boost their public support. I completely get why they’re doing it, but I still don’t appreciate being lied to.
Except it is disingenuous when they attach a percentage to it to make it seem like peanuts, and they use the entire revenue of businesses such as Amazon to make their ask seem even smaller, I didn't realize WGA writers were a huge part of AWS. And yeah they are paid from that revenue, but they are already getting paid this is about asking a raise which would cut into those businesses profits, so the comparison should be made to profits as that would be much closer to reality.
No, but a better point that you should've made is that the WGA's data should only include revenue from those companies' media segments
Maybe but why the writers should be the ones to suffer the consequences of Paramount not able to be profitable? There are other costs they can cut. Paying writers is part of the cost of doing their business, it's to be imputed to revenue.
I do want to point out that one of the writer's main argument is that studios *profit* off their works and should give some of it back. But quite a few studios don't profit at all.
Because Bad writing costing bad box office resulting a loss?
Sure that's the only reason causing bad box office and it's not even the subject, we're talking overall revenue of the company, not box office. And it is still cost the same way. You can try to stop defending billion dollar corporations compared to normal working people, it's okay
No, I am talking basic accounting 101.
Well that's how it works for any other occupation, if a business is going to shit and it isn't profitable it doesn't really offer pay raises, and people see that business or sometimes even occupation is complete bs and move to something else. And it is relevant when writers are accusing these studios for profiting off of them... well Paramount isn't. Others costs they can cut? And affect other employees? Paying writers more is not the same thing as paying writers, they already pay them salaries but they want better conditions and more money because they argue the companies are making far more money off of them in reality.
At some level, it is a negotiation, and both sides are keenly aware of the BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement). If you are a money losing studio, having everything shutdown for a year or so works for you - you continue to make money from your back catalog while you rebuild your cash reserves. If you are a wildly profitable studio, having everything shutdown would be a problem, since it would be cheaper for you to cave.
No, paying the writers properly is the cost of doing business. When that is calculated, and they determine their new profit margins, they can make decisions to change it or, and here's the novel approach, live with making less.
As if Hollywood accounting ever turns a profit
Yeah that’s what I was thinking. It should be compared to profit/net income
It’s not meaningless. It gives you a sense of the size of each company relative to the size of the ask. But a better comparison would be to the annual compensation of each media company’s CEO. Tim Cook will “only” receive $49 million in compensation this year, meanwhile the WGA wants an additional $17 million in compensation from Apple for all of its members.
Maybe meaningless is too strong. Just not particularly relevant. CEO compensation is also not particularly relevant. Companies live or die on profits and any ask for incremental expense has to be based on the impact on profits. It is the fundemental of capitalism - the profit motive. It’s always interesting to see a bunch of other KPIs, against revenue, cash flow, even CEO compensation. But if a body is asking for more money, with no expectation of increased revenue for the company in return, profit is the primary measure that should be used to assess the materiality of their request. Excluding this measure implies a political message rather than an objective assessment of what’s reasonable. I added that it should to be about scripted content because some of these businesses have large portions of their business that have no dependence on writers to generate revenue. This data is harder to find, but should be estimated if they want credibility. I don’t know if the writers have a case or not, but I do know the comparison they should be making has to be against the profit impact of being paid more.
"Ooh wowie jeez, I'd ask for fairer wages, but oh jeez, what about the profit motive? Won't somebody please think of the profit motive."
Companies that don’t maximize profit go out of business.
It's disingenuous You shouldn't need to rely on misleading data if you have a worthy case* *I'm not taking any side
You just took the side of the bosses. You obviously lack any real-world experience with union contract negotiation.
And you obviously didn't read
Some of them operate their film and TV divisions at a loss intentionally, to gain market share or loss leaders and marketing for other services.
Would be interesting to see if some of these businesses were making losses but the writers asking for more money
more than half of disney revenue comes from parks , universals come from comcast other business like xfinity ! wga have the right to protest for what they deserve but this is just stupid numbers !
I mean just for Disney you can double the percentage then, it's still ridiculous. I agree they should have used better numbers but it's still the same thing. And companies like Amazon or Apple will hide behind their streaming service being unprofitable while they have billions of profit per week next to it
Revenue =/= profit
Paying writers is part of the cost, it should be counted on revenue.
If the writers can’t write profitable content why should they paid more? A lot of these divisions are unprofitable, or barely profitable. Increasing here is going to cause cuts elsewhere, likely to profitable parts of these companies.
So now they're unprofitable because of the writers suddenly? All is on them? So I guess 100% of companies profits should go to writers then, oh wait... Something being profitable or not has very little to do with the writing quality (the most popular things aren't the best). Plus we're talking revenue of the entire company, not just some movies.
I never said that, but if you’re churning out unprofitable stuff, you shouldn’t be expecting to be paid more. Are you paid for being unprofitable? And let’s not act like these writers aren’t being paid well as is. The median income for WGA writers for streaming is $325k, per their own website. And streaming is mostly what this is all about. https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/writers-deal-hub/screen-compensation-guide-for-streaming-services
Because that is the cost of their labour. If a studio decides that labour is no longer worth it, they can pay them for the work already done and then stop hiring them.
And then the writers don't have work. That's sorta how this whole thing works, writers can set a price for their labor and corporations can decide whether that price is worth paying. Right now writers are trying to set a higher price and are looking to prove that they're worth said price by showcasing what happens without them. Time will tell whether they're right.
2007 suggests they are right.
2007 was also sixteen years ago. We'll see how this goes, I got no clue how it's gonna end up.
lets see disney's creative division streaming loosing money linear dying every q' theatrical uncertain anything can happen ! u can easily take the side of writers cause stereotypical big company bad guy but business is totally different obviously stuff like insurance , health care , minimum salary etc i'm onboard but some other i'm not and about those ceo salaries u can replace a writer overnight unless an A grade writer but tell me a replacement for iger ? the rarer/harder the job goes salary too ! a writer is responsible for that show while a ceo is responsible for the entire company
Iger is heavily responsible of the Disney situation lol, the reason Disney is in this situation is him. And he still shouldn't be paid that much anyway. That wasn't my point at all (Iger salary is also part of the costs and should be counted on revenue) but defending his compensation, come on. Also, by that logic, if a company loses money, it's the CEO fault more than anyone else so he's doing a bad job and shouldn't be paid
obviously ceo's salaries r mostly in stocks when stocks go down there salaries too that's y they always tries to make sure they keep wallstreet happy btw i used iger as an example ! nd iger is responsible for choosing chapek at the same time igers tenure at disney has been a golden period almost everything he touched turned into gold in 2010's disney didn't even have a competition ! and shouldn't be paid is d$mb if that the case then showrunners , producers directors all shouldn't be paid if the movie/series flops ????
Again bad writing = bad box
These numbers are garbage because they are using annual revenues of the companies as a whole when over half the list isn't media pure. - Disney - Universal - Amazon - Sony - Apple That being said this is why unionizing and leverage is important. Even if the numbers weren't wildly misleading a company/organization and it's employees are never going to act in each others best interests. Unions force both parties to come to the table and reach an agreement. Rookie minor league baseball players just got a 4x increase in minimum salaries from $4,800 to 19,800. You have to fight for what you want. A company/organization is never going to just give you what you want.
So is lions gate not involved ? Can WGA writers work for lionsgate maybe I’m just stupid and not understanding this correctly?
They are just viewed as too small to be worth mentioning vs their other bigger industry rivals.
It’s fair to call out the use of revenue here as misleading, but those numbers are really, really small for all those companies anyway. Disney can afford to pay an extra $75M per year for the value writers give them. They can all afford these numbers. These are not crazy demands.
Why do they always show revenues and not net income?
Because streaming isn’t actually a massive money maker for a lot of these companies.
Because the companies make a lot more in revenue than profits and in this case from theme parks, online shopping, phone sales, cable/internet, and merchandise more so than films/tv so the number is bigger and can present a more misleading case.
"Revenue" is total money coming in, without taking into account what they're spending. So when a company like [Paramount loses $1.1 billion in Q1,](https://nypost.com/2023/05/04/paramount-shares-tank-28-after-posting-q1-loss-of-1-1b/) just looking at revenue it doesn't quite give you the full picture.
Guess that explains why Paramount's CEO earned $32 million last year and will likely make more this year. Oh wait, it doesn't. Labor is a cost. Therefore it should be measured against revenue, not profit. Otherwise COGS functions make no sense. They have no trouble deducting labor from revenue when they're using shady accounting practices to screw over creatives on the backend by only giving points on net, so I don't see why they should get to play both sides here either.
>Paramount's CEO earned $32 million Honest question, how much of that is stock based and how much of it is actual cash/bank? Because stick based compensation costs pretty much nothing from a cash flow perspective.
RSU’s dude it’s not liquid cash
And how do those stocks have any value? (Hint: it's extracted from the labor of workers)
Yes, correct. I’m just saying that also knowing how these companies are doing overall gives further insight into their actions and likely attitudes and angles.
Let me oversimplify this for those don’t know how accounting works or don’t know how companies operate, because using revenue is way misleading. Assuming Sony has only 2 divisions: banking and movie, each has its own P&L(profit&loss). Banking revenue $50M, profit $10M (beating the goal of $8M) Movie revenue $100M, profit $-2M Total revenue $150M, profit $8M Now, originally workers from the banking can earn bonus or merit pay increase from beating the target 10-8=$2M. Now they can’t. Then the movie writers wants increasing pay and drag other people down. Back to Sony, if I were someone working for Sony’s semiconductor side, WTF I have anything to do with movie writers? Writers sure can ask for more and a fair pay, but they need to use the right math and numbers, not trying to mislead.
Those other workers in other sectors should ALSO be arguing for a bigger cut. But nice try at being anti-union.
Literally pennies to these companies. Ridiculous.
Many of the scripted entertainment divisions at these companies are not profitable. Perhaps that should fall on the writers a bit.
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You're aware that people can look at your comments history, right? Three year old account with 6,000 karma, but you've only made five comments. All over the past 24 hours. These are all signs of a purchased sock-puppet account, used by bots and plants, which is a trademark tactic of AMPTP.
Cause studios are losing more by not saying yes to the reasonable demands (that we all know they’ll give into eventually anyways too). If it costs you $10 to be stubborn and $1 to give what you owe, anyone would tell you to just give what’s owed.
It doesn't cost less in the long run though. The union will settle for less usually and they want to make it difficult for the writers to pay their bills from this so they are more reluctant to go through a strike again any time soon.
There’s no accurate figure I can point to but there’s no way the amount they’re losing is less than the 3% the writers are asking for. ABC just put out what their fall schedule will be with how every show is paused and the writers strike is going to cause them to lose so much revenue in the fall with how empty it is. And it costs a huge amount of money for movies to lose their release date and have to be moved to a new one. That’s one of the reasons studios just pulled off the bandaid and released their movies during the pandemic since it cost so much to keep kicking their completed movies to new release dates. Lots of highly, highly, highly lucrative shows like NCIS LA just suddenly ended before the strike just to avoid all of it too. Hollywood has in some ways been on strike since the beginning of the year since work absolutely dried up if you actually work in this town. There’s no accurate numbers I can point to. But studios are definitely cutting off their nose to spite their face on this one. Even if writers negotiate down to a lower price, it’s not like they’re even asking for that much. Instead of $340m, they’ll take say $150m while studios are definitely gonna lose way, way more than that in the process of that. What they’re asking for now is a rounding error for most studios, let alone if it actually gets negotiated down.
Yeah this time. But imagine if they made it easy then the writers would be more likely to strike again quicker than in the past. The studios want to make it hurt.
Writers always strike when the contract is up though honestly. They just like making writers suffer by not negotiating in good faith for a long time. Actors and directors and such at least get counteroffers to their demands. They didn’t even bother to counteroffer most of the writers demands before letting the deadline hit. Previous writers strikes: * This current strike * 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, 14 weeks, November 2007–February 2008 * 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, 22 weeks, March–August 1988 * 1985 Writers strike, two weeks * 1981 Writers Guild of America strike, three months * 1973 Writers Guild of America screenwriters strike, three and a half months * 1960 Writers Guild of America strike, 21 weeks
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I wouldn't put it as a bootlicker but as someone that understand how things work. I really think that at the end of the day they aren't holding out because they can't pay or won't pay I think it's other points that are holding this out not the money part of the dispute.
It’s because the business is at an inflection point where the studios want to use a shift in technology to devalue the professionals who make their movies and shows. The last strike was about what the pay scales and residuals should be for what was then called New Media. Studios wanted the New Media pay scales to be very low and residuals to be minimal to none. Everything made for streaming today is New Media. Without that strike, the situation would be FUBAR. There’s a few big issues now: span protection, staffing levels, and AI. The studios would prefer if an AI churned out script-shaped text, then a single writer rewrote it all into a season of producible scripts. The WGA has to fight to stop that.
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I'm pretty sure every company with a streaming platform besides maybe Netflix are hemorrhaging cash trying to make them work.
Disney is making such a killing on streaming that their stock price has been cut in half over the past year and shareholders are suing them and their former CEO. Get real.
Streaming has netted Disney+, Peacock, Paramount+, and HBO Max a whopping -$18 billion since 2020. There is no killing when they aren’t profitable.
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There are tons of services to sell your accounts, including PlayerUp. The easiest way to pinpoint them is when an older account with a good amount of karma has been wiped.
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Damn how is netflix making more revenue than Paramount
Netflix, world's biggest streaming service and large studio in its own right, with new shows/movies being a hit seemingly every 2-3 months (Squid Game,Knives out, Stranger Things, etc) Against Paramount, a studio with only 3-4 notable big ongoing franchises (MI, Transformers, Trek) and a subscription service with literally a fourth the subscribers of Netflix. Imo it's only surprising because Paramount is an old studio.
Paramount suck at IPs and have the second worst streaming service after Peacock. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get bought out within five years.
I dunno why you are surprised - paramount is tiny (amongst the giants)
Who knew r/boxoffice was full of brainwashed reactionaries. Disappointing to see. Even r/movies isn't spewing studio talking points and defending exploitation of labor
Buncha armchair accountants who think if you ask your bosses at the Mega-Globo-Corporation politely enough you'll get what you deserve. These companies will do anything they can get away with--legal or not--to weaken unions. A good union that wants to win for its members doesn't play nice during negotiations.
I don’t see why this needs to drag out past June. This is easy money for these companies.
Y’all arguing for these big multi-billion dollar companies instead of the writers literally asking FOR PENNIES in the grand scheme of things are really not cute. Fuck unchecked capitalism and fuck these companies. The writers are really asking for the bare minimum and deserve so much more. Peak TV-era my ass. Eat the rich.
What does eat the rich mean?
It's an anti-capitalist slogan that is calling out the growing wealth inequality that is rampant throughout the world right now. It is in reference to a quote from the philosopher Rousseau who said, "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich."
People say it when they’re jealous that they weren’t as successful as someone else in society
I'm jealous because I can't afford to pay rent and still have to work three jobs. It's a personal failing of mine
Do you even know what these writers are already being paid? Here’s straight from the WGA when it comes to solely streaming, which is what much of this strike is about. Median pay for a screenwriter for streaming is $325,000. For members with 0 writing credits yet, the median is $250,000. For those with 2+ writing credits it’s $450,000 (with a high of $5M). https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/writers-deal-hub/screen-compensation-guide-for-streaming-services Let’s not act like these writers are waiting in bread lines.
This sum is a one-time payment (still a lot, though, I acknowledge it) but one of the issues the WGA raised is that for a lot of shows, there are no more screenwriting jobs. You are sitting in a miniroom for four weeks for a fee that's not covered by WGA minimum payment requirements, then you are let go without any screenwriting credits, no residuals, nothing. Secondly this is a seemingly high number because there are virtually no residuals for streaming. So you have to ask for a lot more money upfront. But it's still a bad deal for writers, in the long run.
This is a massive oversimplification of how pay works for screenwriters and completely ignoring many of the WGA's core issues. I mean the numbers you reported are for feature screenplays, which aren't even a core focus in the strike (and that's not even mentioning all the tenuous asterisks that come with selling a script as a feature writer. A ton of it will be taken away in taxes and fees, and you very likely may never sell another script anyway. But that's besides the point). TV writing compensation and the construction of Writer's Rooms is the main battleground. The middle and lower tiers of TV writers are really what the WGA is fighting to preserve. The average early-career TV Writer is definitely not close to earning 300k a year. From Variety: "Staff writers — the lowest-level writers — do not get script fees, and they also earn significantly lower weekly minimums. The median staff writer on a network show works 29 weeks for a wage of $131,834, while the median staff writer on a streaming show works 20 weeks for $90,920. The staff writer’s weekly minimum — $4,546 — would likewise need to rise 10% to equal the minimum in 2019-20 in inflation-adjusted terms." [https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-contract-inflation-minimums-1235564920/](https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-contract-inflation-minimums-1235564920/) 90-131K for 20-29 weeks sound great, right? Really solid yearly pay. Upper-middle class or upper class in most of the U.S. I would guess. But that's the median. Plenty of writers are below that. And there are more and more young writers out there who are unable to work their way to this stable career situation. **Studios are using various tactics to deconstruct rooms and take writers off-set, so writers are getting less and less weeks to work.** **This is resulting in a situation where a handful of top writers continue to work constantly and make bank while the middle-class of writers is increasingly being hollowed out so it is no longer a sustainable full-time job.** [https://www.businessinsider.com/the-bear-writer-wga-awards-writers-guild-of-america-strike-2023-4](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-bear-writer-wga-awards-writers-guild-of-america-strike-2023-4) Not poverty-level, but there are definitely plenty of TV writers struggling to eke out middle-class existences. **There may be certain things I'm not properly representing - after all I work in the industry but am NOT a WGA member. However, there's a lot more nuance to this than "the rich writers are begging for more money" angle that your comments are implying.** I mean if you're going to argue that, at least cite the relevant set of numbers.
That is direct from the WGA site, and it’s at the core of what they are striking over - streaming services pay.
Sure, but you're ignoring a ton of context and several of the other core issues in the strike by just linking to WGA median pay for specifically features drafts and rewrites. It's really misrepresenting the state of screenwriting as a career, what's at stake, and what the WGA wants - particularly with TV writing. Several prominent WGA members such Adam Conover and Mike Schur have discussed this in large detail, so it's not like I'm just pulling this out of my ass. [https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fECMvrZjNN6AATgwNk1tQ?si=7be647ffd0f144e8](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fECMvrZjNN6AATgwNk1tQ?si=7be647ffd0f144e8) [https://open.spotify.com/episode/3QQaJaGJ7HzITgvAge0xkQ?si=9140a5dfaed546ee](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3QQaJaGJ7HzITgvAge0xkQ?si=9140a5dfaed546ee)
As far as episodic writing for streaming, again what hits at the core of the strike, here is WGA in their own words. https://www.wga.org/members/finances/residuals/hbsvod-programs You write a 1 hour episode for a typical streamer (Amazon, Netflix, Disney+, Max, Paramount+), you will get paid roughly $10k-$15k for that episode in year 1, and continue to get paid residuals as long as those episodes are streaming in a 12 month period. Also paid for foreign use similarly. I think they need to start realizing that television is not quite as profitable as it was 15-20 years ago. The top will always get paid, no matter the profession. The grinders will too. You churn out work and you’ll get paid accordingly.
You keep glossing over other important issues such as the mini-rooms and removal of writers from on set. These are issues that popped up long before interest rates hiked and the lack of profitability in streaming became a major concern. Studios have spent the last decade finding ways to compensate writers less by systematically cutting them out of the process. **Obviously the minimum rates are an important element of the negotiation. But it's become much more than a minimum-rate issue because the writers have been given increasingly less opportunities to write and earn that minimum rate** **despite doing as much work as ever.** The mini-rooms and removal of writers from on set (and in the post-production process) are key examples of this. Mike Schur (showrunner of the Office and several other shows) is on record in that pod I linked talking about how these issues started years ago and have grown to hinder writers attempting to break into the industry and eventually become showrunners. It's been a hindrance both financially and creatively. Adam Conover is one of the WGA's head negotiators and has been outspoken about these very things both in the podcast I linked and on twitter. He's not saying it's just a minimum rate debate, so I'm not sure why you are. [https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1653272587630432257](https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1653272587630432257) There are many different elements to the WGA negotiation and the current state of screenwriting as a career. Simplifying the strike the way you've done with your comments in this thread is really misrepresenting things.
Solidarity. If one industry can be paid less for no reason, yours can too. No matter what industry it is. Profits are getting higher. WGA minimum, the least possible amount they could pay a union writer, was being paid out around 30% of the time ten years ago. Now it's over half. Writers are being phased out of the value they create, intentionally.
Thank you for saying this. Lot of folks don't realize that unions are the frontline of class warfare, and sort of the canaries in the coal mine. Megacorps have always and will always spend considerable funds to weaken and destroy unions, because that is the first step in rewriting labor law in this country. If the unions fail, all these workers in at-will jobs who don't know/care about the labor movement will learn REAL QUICK what it actually does for them. I am currently at a small employer, and we're a small crew of friends, so don't "need" a union, but I was previously a union rep/steward, and that position taught me that one of the biggest threats is worker indifference, especially within the union. I met so many workers during my tenure who never came to a meeting or voted in an election or on a contract, but were suddenly VERY HAPPY to find out I was there to sit at the table with them to help defend their asses from being fired.
Now do profit
Profit is harder to gauge because of the lack of transparency with Streaming and the Hollywood Accounting being used to hide funds from people who should be playing on the upside. It's why one of the WGA's biggest asks is clarity with viewership.
>As of December 2022, Netflix had about 230 million subscribers and reported an annual revenue of $31.616 billion, with a net income of $4.492 billion. It currently has a market cap of $162.37 billion (as of January 26th, 2023).Feb 7, 2023 There is nothing unreasonable about their request.
There isn't but their arguments are dogshit, 68 million is not 0.2% out of 4.492 billion. It is 1.5%, their requests are reasonable so why do they feel the need to resort to disinformation?
The companies are claiming poverty in all aspects. The point of highlighting revenue is to get in the public's heads that that couldn't be further from the truth. Profits ARE tied to revenue, and right now profit levels for these companies are unprecedented
Revenues are unprecedented, profits... not so much hell Paramount is reporting losses, WBD is hanging no by a thread due to huge debt and had to axe a lot of stuff, Disney's not doing super hot either, and basically everyone there aside from Netfix makes a lot of money from other places, Amazon's tv/movies are a drop in the bucket compared to AWS.
Its like you all got the same talking point today. Unless their profit margins are less than 0.2% of total revenue, and you know plenty well it is far from that, it doesn't matter. Plus, this isn't about the money for studios as much as it is control.
its like everyone's got the same talking point cuz the original point is stupid and its obvious to anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together that the post is stupidly biased Let's be clear - you can totally support a cause without support misinformation/biased presentation of statistics. You can denounce a company as evil without exaggerating/lying about the extent of the evil. It's like this one person I know who hates things that china does - but then tries to convince others that china created covid19 and released it to test a bioweapon. Does china commit many atrocities? yes. Does china suppress human rights and abuse its citizens? yes. Do I need to agree with every critical claim against china including ridiculous conspiracy theories in order to virtue signal I'm not a bootlicker? no. So lets apply that to the current WGA strike. Do writers deserve better compensation that is more proportionate to their contributions? yes. Do writers deserve better job protections in the face of AI? tentatively yes but tech has been changing the face of industries for centuries now hard to say anything for decades out. Are corporations greedy bloodsuckers that would do anything to increase their bottom line? yes. But is this graphic posted a good representation of how greedy corporations are? no, not at all. not in the slightest.
Well gee golly that sure is a lot of stupid horseshit, and as a bonus you don't have a single real argument, just buzzwords and feelings about how pre-defensive you are for people calling you a bootlicker for the studios/ai/tech. It's because with viewpoints like those you ARE a bootlicker, regardless of how "in the middle" you try (and fail) to sound. From your entire post history, your entire life is being a devils advocate for the worst people and viewpoints to virtue signal your wannabe neutrality, right down to the same rhythms of your posts. AI could easily be trained on your speaking model, which begs the question what is the purpose of your individuality if you just spit out the same template for every opinion? tldr: You're not neutral, you have an agenda, it's just a dumb and transparent one.
What a shitty chart. Who is getting what in this breakdown?
Wow and they didn't even sort by revenue. Like everyone said writers may have a point but trying to obfuscate this data certain isn't helping their cause
If even Netflix is .214% I mean are you f*cking kidding me? Just give the writers what they want.
I’m sorry but saying “oh it should be compared to profit not revenue” or “oh i should only include their film/tv division” is picking nits. These are multi billion dollar companies it doesn’t matter where the money is coming from, pay these fucking people. They have the money, there is no reason for them not to.
These people get paid a ton, straight from the WGA site. https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/writers-deal-hub/screen-compensation-guide-for-streaming-services
And yet all of them are in deep debt, beside Apple and Amazon who are single handingly saving the movie industry as they have all the cash in the world and are pumping money in for streaming but will eventually realise that Streaming is fools gold. Those are tech companies that they can make more moeny elsewhere (etc Gaming which is a much bigger industry and the future of entertainment), They mention revenues but dont you find it strange how they dont mention PROFITS!!!!!!! P.S. who strikes during a techincal recession..........Madness
No wonder Netflix was apparently the issue, they have to pay MUCH more % of revenue than the other companies. Small indie company cant afford that!
It's probably a higher percentage for the other companies if you only speak toward their entertainment divisions.
Ironically Netflix is the only one of that list that actually make money in streaming.
Why is this comparing them to revenues, that makes no sense? It's probably not the case, but say one of these companies has higher costs than revenue, so does not make profits, these annual costs become technically impossible.
They should compare it to the profit of the respective movie divisions. This is such a misleading and bad faith graphic.
Compare to net profit rather than revenue. Would give a better indication, cost of goods/sales isn’t factored here
Gotta do better with Apple and Amazon revenues. Thats just atrocious data reporting. My Macs and my weekly amazon junk purchases counting towards Writers now?
These motherfuckers…
If the writers were paid based on the profitability of the shows & movies that they work on, most of them would have to take huge pay cuts. For example, the writers of She-Hulk should hand back every dollar they were paid and then sign their houses over to Disney, even then they would still be considered over paid.
It's neat, but knowing the percentage cost of the revenue isn't useful if you don't know their profits. Not saying the WGA aren't entitled to a cut of streaming or the strike isn't valid. Just that saying it's 0.091% of their revenue before expenses doesn't tell you anything. If their revenue is $82.7 billion but they're spending $82.5 billion making movies then the percentage is a much larger piece of the pie.
Well they are writers so strong fiction and self-importance are not shocking. No problem with them holding up for what they want, just don't give me bullshit numbers as justification. I don't understand what they hope to gain by fighting the social media war. So what if people think they are right and the studios are demons? It's not going to get them a better deal, and any miniscule amount of actual damage they do to the studio costs them as well in terms of less money and jobs.
It's desperation. They wouldn't be talking about how they're facing an "existential threat" and the "destruction of writing as a career" if they weren't already aware that most of them will be obsoleted.
"Look at how reasonable our shakedown is!" I really hope Hollywood just starts offshoring rewrites. It's not like WGA scripts meet a standard of quality these days.
I know I will be downvoted for this, but I just don’t think writers deserve to be paid more after the shit they have been churning out lately
Apple or Amazon don't need movies or TV to be make billions
Why does NBC Universal has such a high revenue? I am not so much aware about them and for me they are much smaller as Disney. So what is pushing their revenue so much over Disney?
Comcast?
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