Since Deadline formed 14 years ago, we’ve never lost sight of the human struggles felt by writers and everyone else during labor standoffs. Today, we proudly launch Strike Talk with Billy Ray and Todd Garner, a weekly podcast dedicated to dissecting the issues that caused talks to break off between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, this week prompting the writers to trade their pencils for picket signs. A reckoning is upon us, as writers try to keep their place at a moment when studios and streamers struggle to impose economic efficiencies to show fiscal responsibility to their shareholders, and writers struggle with things like streaming deals that have no chance for backend compensation in success, and series that have far fewer than the 22 episodes that had been the norm on the traditional networks.
In Strike Talk’s Week One episode, Ray and Garner discuss everything from the dangers of AI, to how writer compensation has dipped in spite of billions generated by studios and streamers, to misconceptions in how a strike could give studios the excuse to jettison unprofitable projects and overall deals through force majeure, to how much more difficult it is for most writers to make a decent living than 10 or 15 years ago.
Aside from being an Oscar-nominated writer, director and producer with credits ranging from Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games, Shattered Glass, Richard Jewell and The Comey Rule, Ray was the WGA’s co-chair on the negotiating committee in 2017. Garner is a onetime Disney exec-turned-producer who runs Broken Road Productions, and whose credits include Anger Management, 13 Going on 30, Paul Blart: Mall Cop and xXx. He also hosted the podcast The Producer’s Guide.
Strike Talk will run weekly until the labor stalemate is resolved, and Ray and Garner will add guests each week.
For more episodes of Strike Talk, listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.