Series and movies are in danger: how the Hollywood writers' strike will be reflected on our screens

Hollywood lives in turbulent times.

The

(WGA) has been on strike since Monday, which will undoubtedly bring unhappy consequences for the country's leading audiovisual producers.

The writers are able to move the needles because

.

Without the writers there are no jokes, the monologues disappear, the series do not advance as fast as they should, the films do not directly begin to be produced.

For the reasons mentioned above, Hollywood will experience delays just as it did in 2007, the year of the last major strike.

That stoppage lasted 100 days and cost the entertainment industry 2,000 million dollars.

Members of the WGA East protest outside the offices of the Peacock streaming service.

Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The walkout that began Monday is the first 

 writers' protest in 15 years.

The opposite “camp” to the WGA, the one the guild argues with, is

the

(AMPTP).

The union's main claim has to do with the low pay of screenwriters in jobs for 

productions .

The writers denounce that there is more and more money to make series, but less work and money for them.

The scriptwriters denounce that for a long time smaller groups of writers have been hired to work on a project and that these, on top of that, do so for shorter periods.

"

," said the leaders of the WGA, who organized pickets in New York and Los Angeles on Tuesday.

West Union headquarters in Los Angeles on Tuesday, May 2, 2023. Photo: AP

The union's conversation with the studios was interrupted because the solution they provided was not considered sufficient.

The AMPTP said in a statement that its offer included "

," but still no deal could be reached.

In 2019-2020, according to Variety, the weekly minimum for a writer who is on the staff of a TV series was

.

They work 29 weeks on a TV show for almost 132,000 a year or an average of 20 weeks on

platforms for nearly 91,000.

The WGA represents 11,500 writers.

Photo: Getty Images via AFP

Programs that will be affected

The strike will begin to make itself felt before anywhere else in the gradual "disappearance" of 

.

Cycles like

,

,

and

 little by little they will begin to show repetitions, and they will do so until the situation is regularized.

Joe Biden and Jimmy Kimmel at Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

As for the series,

and

, from Netflix and Paramount Plus, respectively, are two works whose producers have already announced that their new seasons will be delayed.

Something similar would happen with the new episodes of

, a series available on Star+, which would have been put on hold after the strike was declared.

Netflix will delay the new season of Cobra Kai.

How long will these projects be out?

If the same thing happens as in the last strike, the

could return to the air after about

.

With respect to the series, everything is uncertainty.

some background

Following the strike at the end of 2007, hugely popular series such as

,

,

, and

premiered shorter seasons with rushed endings.

From that decision we can highlight the continuity of

in Breaking Bad.

The character played by

was going to leave at the end of the first season, but since there was a writers' strike and the broadcast was cut short, his character stayed.

Breaking Bad was "benefited" by the strike.

On the other hand, it's worth remembering that back then, Kimmel paid his staff out of pocket until he had to go back on the air after depleting almost all of his life savings.

David Letterman

, for example, who was also a producer, made a special deal with the union to get his writers back on the job.

David Letterman saying goodbye to his show.

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