Starting today, the Writers Guild of America and all of its members are on strike. The move will impact and disrupt television shows and movies.

The decision to strike was made after six weeks of negotiating with Netflix, Amazon, Apply, Disney, Warner Bros., NBC Universal, Paramount, and Sony. An agreement couldn’t be made with the WGA stating that the studios’ responses have been “wholly insufficient”.

The Writers Guild of America and its members are negotiating for a new three-year contract. Their previous one expired at midnight Monday. The discussions center around compensation for streaming
, healthcare benefits, pensions, improvements in streaming residuals, and the future use of AI among other topics. “Mandatory staffing” and “duration of employment” are two sticking points with the Guild proposing a certain number of writers for a specified period of time. An example of a change is that currently, writers don’t get paid every time somebody watches a streaming show. One writer said they used to receive half their original writing fee each time an episode re-aired but now just receives 5.5% of their fee.

The impact is immediate as late-night talk shows are shutting down production and will air re-runs and the next productions likely to be disrupted are soap operas since their writing is not long before they’re film. Primetime television should remain relatively uninterrupted as episodes have already been written and filmed but there is belief this strike could drag on which will impact next seasons. Studio executives have stated they have been stockpiling scripts in anticipation of this. Films are created years in advance so it’d have to be quite a strike to greatly interrupt the movie release schedule.