WRITERS STRIKE: You Killed Residuals. Prepare to Pay! -Mandy Patinkin
Bob Odenkirk and Mandy Patinkin joined the Writers Strike picket line outside Warner Bros. Discovery offices in New York City today.
Saul’s unite! #wgastrong
— Mandy Patinkin (@PatinkinMandy) May 10, 2023
Support our writers! pic.twitter.com/VdyElwh7C5
The two actors spent most of last Fall in Vancouver: with Bob Odenkirk filming AMC’s Lucky Hank and Mandy Patinkin shooting Hulu’s Career Opportunities in Murder & Mayhem.
Related: Hollywood Writers Are On Strike
The Writers Guild of America says the big push into streaming services has turned full-time writing careers into a “gig economy”. Writers could work on a 20+ episodes show for almost a year in the golden era of network television. Now episode orders are half that or less. And there is no upside if the show is a streaming success because streamers won’t share data about viewership and streamer residuals are fixed not viewership-based. Put that all together and writers are earning less despite the boom in content.
Clearly, the fixed residuals in streaming is one of the big issues in the WGA strike against the eight negotiating studios (Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney-ABC, NBC Universal, Paramount-CBS, Warner Bros Discovery, Sony) of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) now in its second week.
Make sure you take care of people! You guys make millions and million of dollars! For gods sakes! Without the writers, we have nothing! They create the stories that make our hearts beat! Help out now! — Mandy Patinkin told an unseen WBD executive.
Mandy Patinkin: “Without writers we have nothing!” #WritersGuildStrike @WGAEast pic.twitter.com/5lx4sKw6JT
— Lisa Takeuchi Cullen 竹内理沙 (@LisaCullen) May 10, 2023