Happy Friday War & Peaceniks. Ready to negotiate?
“Disney, Amazon, and Netflix are positioning themselves to be the new gatekeepers of media, growing through acquisitions and using their increased power to disadvantage competitors, raise prices for consumers, and to push down wages for creative workers.
“Specifically, Disney has used its market power to reduce film output, shut down competing studios, foreclose independent content from its distribution networks, expand control of the labour market, and force creators to give up financial participation in future licensing revenue.”
ICYMI, there’s a strike in Hollywood. Two, actually.
After stonewalling, the Studios literally just came back to the table. Which makes this report from the Writers Guild of America West called “The New Gatekeepers: How Disney, Amazon and Netflix Will Take Over Media” a really odd negotiating tactic: “let’s find a compromise - hold on a sec, first we need to dash off this polemic about how you’re destroying the world.”
And yet, the WGA has a point at the end of their sword shaped pencils.
The modern adaptation of vertical integration (making content exclusively for your own closed distribution circuit) employed by all big streamers is THE root of what’s most ailing the screenwriting profession. And, no one utilizes these tactics more draconianly (new word!) than the Mouse House, the Smile Box and the Hollywood Killer.
Ironically, though, in diagnosing how these practices have decimated middle class Hollywood creatives, the WGA has identified the cancer at the center of the entertainment industry.
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