May. Already, film and television productions have been fast-tracked in anticipation of a script shortage. A threatened actors' walkout in July has only heightened anxieties. If the scribes ditch their muses for the picket line, their main goal will be fatter royalty checks from cable, video and foreign sales, the same thing that actors want. Over the past 15 years, the situation has gotten substantially worse. One of the guild's esteem-building demands would give its 10,000 members freer access to film sets, the director's lordly realm where writers are routinely barred.
Writers say the credit implies that the director penned the piece.
The guild's creative grievances primarily target movies. In episodic TV, writers more or less run the operation, hiring and firing directors at will. So are directors, who have a union of their own. The Directors Guild of America is dug in against the writers. Caught in the middle is the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the studios' bargaining arm.