The Writers Guild of America and its 12,000 members is about to announce that it will go on strike Monday against studios and networks.
The official announcement will come at a news conference at WGA West headquarters in Los Angeles, following approvals in Friday meetings by the WGA West board and the WGA East Council.
Talks between the WGA and the companies broke down on Wednesday – a few hours before the contract expired – over the issue of DVD residuals and work for the Internet. No new talks have been scheduled.
The strike announcement follows a unanimous recommendation by the Guild’s negotiating committee. WGA leaders told 3,000 members of the strike plans Thursday night at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
In voting several weeks ago, WGA members gave a 90% endorsement to authorize their leaders to call a strike if no agreement could be reached.
I’m so fucking depressed right now. On the bright side, I now have plenty of time to work on my gamerscore…
I am one of those parasitic industry critters who are going to be seriously affected by this. As a freelance reader, I depend on a steady influx of script submissions to production companies in order to survive. In several cases that influx has already slowed to a trickle. There’s still some work coming in, particularly through non-WGA affiliated organizations (like the Sundance Institute and Scriptshark.com), but I don’t know how long it will last.
I hope production companies keep busy with books and graphic novels, as that will at least provide some material that needs to be covered.
I suppose it’s just as well that events of the last few months have persuaded me that freelance reading is a lousy and unstable job. I’m already taking steps to move into other fields and it may be not a moment too soon. Regardless, though, I hope this strike gets resolved fast, because it’s going to make my life a hell of a lot easier if I can still count on some reading work while I make my transitions.
The whole idea of Blu-Ray porn scares me so much. If you thought the chicks on CSI looked awful in HD, just wait until you’re subjected to pimples on someone’s ass in 1080p on a 50" TV.
Strikes always make me sad. Here is hoping it all works out quickly and so that folks on both sides are only a little dissapointed. That makes it even, right?
There’s a bunch of stuff I can still do, like write for games magazines, work on comic-books, videogames, write my own spec scripts, etc. But its “pencils down” on the studio projects I’ve been working on, which sucks royally.
