AI is “giving Bitcoin”, according to Swarm and She-Hulk: Attorney At Law writer Kara Brown.
Brown, speaking on a panel at the Banff Media Festival alongside This Is Us writer Elan Mastai and Crazy Rich Asians writer Adele Lim, highlighted the challenges for writers as the strike against the studios is in its second month.
But while Brown discussed the issue of artificial intelligence, which has become one of the most talked about issues during the strike, she said that there are more fundamental issues at heart, including residuals. “It sounds scary, but to me at least, I don’t think it’s close to our biggest issue,” she added.
Brown highlighted the lack of streaming residuals as one of her main concerns, having previously written shows for cable and broadcast. She said that she’ll never get another cheque for work on Disney+’s She-Hulk. “That character we built, I’m certain will be in a movie… but I’ll never get anything from that ever again,” she added.
Mastai used NBC’s This Is Us as an example of a model that helped create a better show. He pointed to a “robust” writers room for ten months of the year and the ability to be on set, which he says can save studios hundreds of thousands of dollars by eradicating mistakes. “The result was a show that I think, turned out pretty good for everybody involved,” he said.
“What I always want to tell people who were in those decision making positions is however much money you think you’re saving, by cutting back on writing, you are going to blow so much money by all the screw ups that are going to [happen],” he added.
Lim, who has written films including Crazy Rich Asians and Joy Ride, having got her start on series such as Las Vegas and One Tree Hill, said she had been considering getting back into television before the strike, but the new business models make her “furious”.
“TV, it’s a writer’s medium, we control the whole aspect of it,” she said. “I can’t tell you the number of times that I had to rewrite scenes on the hood of a car so we could make our day. That does not happen when you keep [writers] out of the process.”