Small Screen: WGA Strike Watch, 50 Cent Signs Deal with Fox
Taye Diggs - Amy Sussman
Broadcast: Taye Diggs has departed from CW drama All American. Diggs, who starred as Billy Baker, had been at the center of the series since 2018. Diggs’ character was killed off in its February 13th episode, leaving fans surprised and confused. Despite Diggs’ central role in the show, a sixth season of All American has been confirmed without him. Those who want to see more of the actor can catch him in Peacock’s Best Man: The Final Chapters, Hulu’s Back in the Groove, and even on Broadway with Rent.
Amber Ruffin, host of Peacock’s Amber Ruffin Show and current Late Night with Seth Meyers writer and performer, has announced she will write, star in, and produce a comedy pilot at NBC. The pilot, entitled Non-Evil Twin, also recruits Black-ish and Kenan’s Kenny Smith and Late Night’s Jenny Hagel. Non-Evil Twin takes a multi-camera approach to tell the story of a woman (Ruffin) forced to take over her sister’s role running a Fortune 500 company, despite knowing nearly nothing about the corporation or how it’s been run. The series will appear on NBC’s comedy pilot slate for the 2023-24 season.
Fresh off a fruitful, if not tumultuous, deal with Starz, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has signed a multi-project broadcast deal with Fox. Through his production company G-Unit Film & Television, Jackson will develop scripted dramas, live-action comedies, and even adult animated series to air on Fox, who will retain ownership of all content. G-Unit is credited with Starz’ Power and its three spinoffs Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan, and Power Book IV: Force, as well as BMF and three spinoffs, and Fightland. Jackson is also working on an animated superhero series at BET+ entitled Trill League. Still more projects are in the works and have yet to be announced. The rapper/producer’s deal with Starz has occasionally been fraught, with Jackson occasionally taking to Instagram to publicly bash Starz leadership and the structure of his deal. Despite any drama, the deal produced plenty of content and cemented Jackson and his production company as an industry name.
Lydia West (It’s a Sin) will star in a new comedy on Britain’s Channel 4. The series, whose working title has changed from Super Close to Big Mood, will be directed by Rebecca Asher (Brooklyn Nine Nine) and written by Camilla Whitehill (Porters). It will follow a friendship between Maggie (Nicola Coughlan) and Eddie (West), whose struggles with mental health and a changing friendship will shape their upcoming thirties. The show is loosely based on a real friendship between co-star Nicola Coughlan and writer Camilla Whitehill, whose thirties were similarly turbulent and whose twenties were, according to Coughlan, “the struggle bus.” Coughlan says the topics of mental health and female friendship are important and “very real.”
Streaming: Australian indigenous free-to-air network National Indigenous Television (NITV) has announced its first co-commission with Netflix. The two have begun production in South Australia on Eddie’s Lil’ Homies, an animated series based on children's books written by AFL star Eddie Betts. The series follows eight-year-old Eddie and his friends as they maneuver through the complexities of childhood with the backdrop of a playground. Betts will co-produce with his co-author and wife Anna Scullie, as well as co-author Sophie Byrne; Dave Woodhead, Yaraman Thorne, Ray Boseley, Lorin Clarke, and Julie Sam-Yue will co-author. NITV head of commissions Marissa McDowell expressed excitement for the project, saying, “NITV continues to bring world-class, First Nations children’s stories to Australians . . . We are thrilled to continue our longstanding relationship with the [Australian Children's Television Foundation].”
Hulu has acquired British comedy horror series Wreck, and will be releasing it for its US debut. The show debuted in October on BBC3 in the UK, was commissioned for a second season, and will launch season 1 on Hulu in March. Wreck tells the story of Jamie (Oscar Kennedy), a teenager who takes a job on a cruise ship in a quest to solve his sister’s disappearance. The series stars, among others, The Irregulars’ Thaddea Graham as Vivian Lim, a ship crew member who is trying to escape from under the thumb of her homophobic family. Wreck will be added to a comedy slate at Hulu that includes Standing By and a revival of King Of The Hill.
Shondaland is bringing yet another series to streaming. Queen Charlotte, a Bridgerton spinoff, will release May 4 on Netflix. The six-episode series, written by Shonda Rhimes and starring India Amarteifo, will serve as a prequel to Birdgerton and take place in the “Bridgerton-verse.” Queen Charlotte will tell the story of the young Queen’s marriage and love story and how it led to the events and cultural milieu of the flagship series. Bridgerton cast members Golda Rosheuvel (Queen Charlotte), Adjoa Andoh (Lady Agatha Danbury) and Ruth Gemmell (Lady Violet) will take on the roles of their younger characters in the spinoff. Rhymes teams up with Betsy Beers and Tom Verica as co-executive producers and directors.
Dreamworks has released the trailer for Season 5 of Dragons: The Nine Realms, an animated spinoff of the How to Train Your Dragon movie franchise. The six-episode season will release on Hulu and Peacock on March 2. The series takes place 1,300 years after the events of the film, in a world where the dragons of yore are thought to be nothing but legend. After a yawning crevice opens in the Earth’s surface, a group of misfit children discover that dragons are real. The cast includes Jeremy Shada (Tom Kullersen), Ashley Liao (Jun Wong), Marcus Scribner (D’Angelo Baker), Aimee Garcia (Alexandra Gonzalez), Julia Stiles (Olivia Kullersen), Lauren Tom (May Wong), Haley Joel Osment (Buzzsaw), and Vincent Tong (Eugene.)
Apple TV+’s Metropolis has cast Briana Middleton in the show’s lead role of Finnie Polito. The series, an adaptation of an eponymous 1927 film, has kept its plot mostly secret from the public. If the plot of the book is any indication, however, the show may cover the story of Freder Frederson, a member of the wealthy elite in the city of Metropolis, where wealth disparity is stark. When Frederson meets a young worker from the lower class and begins to see the way the poor live, he has an epiphany and is forced to reckon with the stark divide between economic and social classes. The series Metropolis has been in development for nearly 7 years, and is written, directed, and executive produced by Sam Esmail.
Blood & Treasure, a CBS and Paramount+ series, has been canceled. The thriller series, which ran for two seasons, centered around a quest to bring a terrorist to justice. Sofia Pernas played co-lead Lexi Vaziri, an art thief involved in the pursuit. Blood & Treasure first aired on CBS in 2019, and was subsequently picked up by Paramount+ for another season, which premiered in 2022 after pandemic-related delays.
The Walt Disney Company
Industry: Disney has announced they will be cutting 7,000 jobs and $3 billion in spending in tandem with an overhaul of the company’s content operations. In December, Disney reinstated Bob Iger as CEO after Bob Chapek was removed due to a calamitous Q4 earnings report that saw losses of nearly $1.5 billion. Since his reinstatement, Iger has announced plans to cut more than 3.5% of Disney’s workforce and “aggressively curate” their content offerings with a focus on optimizing streaming. Disney has created three new divisions: parks & experiences, ESPN, and Disney Entertainment (a replacement for the ill-fated Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution, which will include the company’s streamers.) Disney will also seek a return to the third-party production and distribution model in favor of original content from Mouse House. Iger says the changes will “better position us to weather future disruption and global economic challenges.”
Industry insiders are wondering if, back in his role as CEO at Disney, Bob Iger will seek to acquire Hulu from Comcast or sell its current stake in Hulu to focus on its own streaming efforts. Disney currently owns 67% of Hulu, and Comcast owns 33%. Iger has been tight-lipped about his intentions in interviews, stating only that “everything is on the table right now, so I am not going to speculate.” Disney has controlled Hulu since 2019 when it signed a deal with Comcast, and Comcast has the right to sell its remaining stake to Disney as soon as January 2024. Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek had expressed interest in a deal to bring Hulu fully into the Disney fold, while Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had talked about buying out Disney’s majority. Under the terms of their current deal, Hulu’s floor value is $27.5 billion.
The Mentorship Matters initiative has announced its 25 writer mentees and mentors for the 2023 program. Mentorship Matters, sponsored by Amazon and AMC Networks, was created in 2021 as an avenue through which to advocate for and promote writers of color. Mentees will undergo a year of close mentorship from an established showrunner and have the opportunity to get their work in front of some of the biggest industry names. Last year, 14 of 23 mentees landed representatives, and 8 were hired on shows such as Billions, Criminal Minds: Evolution, and The Power. One mentee signed a deal with Sony. Nearly 1,000 applicants applied this cycle. 2023 Mentees include:
Tara Aquino, Alessandra Jara Del Castillo, Callie Chiang, Cindy Chu, Neda Davarpanah, Chelsea Ishikawa, Zimran Jacob, Micah Khan, Tony Koros, Serena Lam, Arielle McAlpin, Prashant Nashi, Lindsay Opoku- Acheampong, Antoine Perry, Alberta Poon, Sofia Quintero, Jacquelyn Revere, Thea Rodgers, Edith Rodriguez, Alexander Rojas, Jai Franklin Sarki, Lauren Marissa Smith, Brittany Turner, Cara Washington, and Habib Yazdi.
Writers Guild
Strike Watch: Shawn Ryan, creator of The Shield, S.W.A.T., and Netflix’s forthcoming The Night Agent, appeared on The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood podcast to explain and discuss the ongoing WGA negotiations and looming strike. Ryan was on the WGA negotiating committees in 2007, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2020, and offers the perspective of both a writer and a negotiator. He explains that at the beginning of a negotiation in the vein of those approaching between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television, there is a “laundry list of things” writers are seeking, some of which may never make it to the negotiation table. Referencing the negotiations in 2007, he recalls the main issue at the time was the jurisdiction of the Internet. In previous decades, writers received “residuals,” which Ryan explains:
“When you write an episode of TV, and that episode is reused in some way, whether it’s foreign or in syndication or or repeat on the original broadcast network, there would be a set formula that would pay you a residual [price.] These residuals were really important for writer’s careers. It allowed writers to survive between gigs.”
With streaming services like Netflix beginning to take off, programming would be reused on the Internet to a frequent and wide degree — in 2007, the main goal of the writers’ strike was to ensure that writers would still make residuals from this new kind of reuse. Though maligned in some circles, the 2007 strike was fruitful in Ryan’s eyes.
“Imagine if you would, a world right now where every TV show that was made for Apple or Hulu or Netflix or Amazon or HBO Max wasn’t covered by the Guild, didn’t contribute pension and health contributions, came with no residuals at all. Everyone who says [the ‘07] strike didn’t [do] anything isn’t acknowledging that all those things that exist right now [exist because of the strike.] I wish that the residuals were higher on these streaming shows. But I have to imagine that the gains total in the hundreds of millions of dollars for writers over the past . . . fifteen to sixteen years now. . . . The strike was less about a conflict between writers and companies and more an internal conflict between the companies themselves.”
Ryan goes on to explain that the current negotiations seek to remedy a problem foreseen by the WGA in 2007:
“[Writers] can make a living on money that we get from repeats on broadcast. We cannot make a living on something that streams in perpetuity that we’re getting a thousand dollar check every twelve months for. The economics of it doesn’t seem to have . . . shifted . . . toward the studios.”
In the sixteen years since, of course, the WGA’s predictions proved correct: more programs are now either streamer originals or distributed wholly or in part by some kind of streaming service. Why, Ryan asks, is the industry still paying writers based on a manner of content consumption in which viewers no longer engage?
Ryan explains that decades ago, fewer shows were being made and fewer repeats were airing; Thus, individual episodes garnered larger viewership. At the start of his career in the late ‘90s, Ryan could count on making $30,000 per episode written and $16,000 in residuals for each repeat. But today, the ubiquity of “repeated” or streamed episodes and the sheer number of different shows means that checks are smaller, viewership per episode is lower, and the old residuals model is failing writers.
“In some part, I understand [the outcome of the current model] because there are fewer viewers for each individual episode. But I don’t think we have the formula that we deserve for that. When you think about not only the revenue that these companies are generating, but their value . . . If you look back over the last . . . ten years in Netflix’s case, they’ve generated extraordinary value. [Writers] are inventing products that these . . . companies are using to to build multibillion dollar businesses upon, for whom those businesses would exist without the work that writers do. [But] writers don’t own . . . percentages of these companies.”
Thus, unlike the tech industry wherein inventors own stakes in companies and make money accordingly, writers are left in the dust of an old structure whose compensation no longer fits with how viewers consume content and contribute value to streaming services.
Back when broadcast television was king, writers were used to a more set routine of hiring, working, and job-seeking.
“There was a very set hiring period that if you worked at a TV show, you were probably doing twenty two to twenty episodes a year. . . . The upfronts [announcements of which shows were to be picked up for the upcoming season] would happen in in early to mid May. If you were already on a show and then that show was coming back and and you knew that they wanted you back, you probably had an option that brought you back. [Then] people would work for ten months from May until late March, maybe early April to make these twenty two to twenty six episodes of TV, [and[ you would get paid an episodic fee number of hours per episodes produced. That work would usually be done over forty five weeks, let’s call it. You’d have an imposed vacation for a month and a half or two . . . until the next season began. If if you weren’t retained on your show or if the show that you were on was canceled, you would know this is the time of year that I’m gonna go out and interview for a job. This was a . . . good living for a lot of writers as they should have been considering that they would create the TV shows that propped up these networks.”
But with the change in distribution and consumption habits, this dependable calendar no longer holds, and writers are feeling the difference.
“The big change that has come from the streaming age is that they are making fewer episodes of television and are taking way longer to make those episodes of television, but often still want to pay an episodic fee for writer services. . . . What you’re really asking for is more time for the same money, which means that your time is less valuable than it was before.”
The goal of negotiations, and of a possible strike, is to change this. The WGA will seek to negotiate an MBA, or minimum basic agreement — a contract that neither caps nor haggles on specific salaries or compensation, but establishes a minimum “floor” for the value of writers’ work.
Ryan emphasizes that it is not just writers who are losing with the outdated compensation structure. Viewers may be bruised as well. Because newer shows have tighter schedules, smaller writers’ rooms, and less job security, and especially because writers are not being compensated fairly, the content suffers.
“You have these thirteen week mini [writers’] rooms, [and] a lot of writers doing work. . . . I think [that] hurts all parties all the way down to the viewers, because it means the content isn’t as good. There used to be a tradition of writer’s working out shows and really learning to produce their own epic shows, which means that they were on staff as their show was being filmed. . . . Writers would see [the production] processand. . . participate in that process. And so you had writers learning essentially how to produce television. . . . Now . . . They’re no longer involved in production. . . .It’s affecting the quality of these shows.”
In the end, Ryan emphasizes, it’s not about writers making “billions of dollars,” but about being able to support middle-class families with their work, Hollywood having a skilled class of TV writers, and viewers getting to consume quality content. Companies, he says, have seen their bottom lines benefit from the new model, but have fallen far short of paying the writers (whom he calls the “inventors” of the product) a fair and reasonable wage.
“We hope that there is a fair and respectful negotiation that reflects the true value of the work [of] writers, the inventors of the product that makes billions of dollars [for] these companies. I feel like writers have been undervalued by these [companies]. . . . It needs to be rectified. And and the companies [need to] sit down in good faith and try to hammer out a fair deal for both sides.”