Latest news with #WritersGuildofAmerica
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
AI's Napster Moment May Be Next
Two years ago this month, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for, among other key issues, a set of landmark AI protections to safeguard our writing and our finished work. It took six months of sustained solidarity, picketing and an outpouring of public support — everyone from fellow unions, politicians and yes, even Elon Musk — before the studios finally met our demands. Today, writers, journalists and creatives across every medium are facing a new kind of existential threat to their professions from the interests of Silicon Valley. Tech companies have been openly lobbying the White House to rewrite copyright law to freely train their models on films, television shows, articles, books and beyond without paying so much as a dime to studios, publishers or writers. OpenAI has been referring to this as 'the freedom to learn.' In New Jersey, it's just called theft. More from The Hollywood Reporter New Report Portrays California's Film and TV Production Environment as Uniquely Burdensome and Expensive Kevin Costner Sued By 'Horizon 2' Stunt Performer Over Unscripted Rape Scene Will Smith Music Video Makes Union Deal With IATSE After Strike Three weeks ago, Shira Perlmutter, the Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, was fired shortly after publishing a new report on Generative AI Training. The release advocated for preserving current copyright law and signaled a setback for Sam Altman's craven attempt to expand the Fair Use doctrine into a smash and grab campaign on decades of copyrighted material. In other words, tech companies cannot use stolen intellectual property in their models. In the meantime, dozens of ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini) and Meta (Llama) making their way through the courts. Without a sympathetic judge willing to distort fair use, these companies could find themselves liable in billions of theft, potentially even more in damages, and in some cases, face total bankruptcy. But we've been down this road before with Napster. The company launched as a free file-sharing app in 1999. Almost overnight people around the world could download entire music libraries in seconds. It was a groundbreaking use of technology that, at the time, felt too good to be true. And that's because it was. Napster was quickly sued out of existence for copyright infringement and racketeering. Since then, every major media tech platforms — YouTube, Spotify and even OpenAI until recently — have been making deals with studios, publishers and labels to compensate them for using their copyrighted work. While many of these agreements have been deeply flawed and exploitive, the firing of Shira Perlmutter represents a pivot to something much worse. Silicon Valley is now asking the government for permission to steal our copyright in order to escape their pending lawsuits. They are knowingly trying to de-value our professions and countless others in order to freely enrich themselves without caring about the consequences. In the case of screenwriters, copyright of an original script is sold to the studios in exchange for core benefits like health care, pension and residuals. This is one of the bedrock principles that has helped sustain writers during the highs and lows of this business. But if copyright protections were to be stripped away, then so begins the unraveling of the entire value proposition that union members past and present have fought so hard to maintain in the film and television industry. In April, Sam Altman appeared on stage with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, who pointed out, 'At first glance, this (ChatGPT) looks like I.P. theft.' The audience erupted in applause until Sam fired back, 'Clap about that all you want. Enjoy.' And then Sam said something far more revealing, 'We do need to figure out some new model around the economics for compensating creative output. Exactly what that looks like I'm not sure.' But the copyright system isn't broken. Companies like OpenAI simply don't want to negotiate consent and pay. So, Sam can shrug about 'the economics for compensating creative output' all he wants. Enjoy. The solution will always be the same. Stop stealing writers work and follow the law. Larry J. Cohen and Sarah Montana are the co-chairs of the Writers Guild of America East AI Task Force. Cohen is a writer, producer and director who currently serves on the WGAE council. Montana is a writer and public speaker who currently serves on WGAE council. Best of The Hollywood Reporter How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023 Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
TV Writing Staffs Got More Diverse Even as Jobs Dwindled, WGA Study Finds
TV writing staffs have continued to get more diverse, even with far fewer jobs available, according to a study released Wednesday by the Writers Guild of America. The report found that 40.4% of TV writers in the 2023-24 season were Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) — up from 32% three years earlier. White staffing declined from 54% to 45.4% over the same timeframe. More from Variety WGA Members Uphold Vote to Expel Two Members for Strike Violations, but Rescind Censure Over Facebook Joke WGA Members Face a 'Deeply Uncomfortable' Vote to Expel Two of Their Own WGA Bars Members From Working on Martin Scorsese-Produced 'Wall of White' Movie From Randall Emmett's Convergence Entertainment The report comes as several major studios have pulled back from prior commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion. Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount have dropped hiring goals tied to race and ethnicity, while the Trump administration has launched investigations of DEI policies at Disney and NBCUniversal. The increase in diversity in TV staffing coincided with a sharp drop in employment, such that fewer writers of all racial backgrounds were actually working in 2023-24. The guild data showed that 673 BIPOC TV writers were employed in 2023-24, a 6.6% decline from 2020-21; while 755 white writers were employed, a 38% decline over the same period. The WGA previously reported a steep decline in employment as a result of the strikes and an industry contraction, as well as a dramatic downturn in total earnings. On the film side, the workforce remains significantly less diverse than in TV, and is diversifying at a slower rate. White screenwriters make up 63.6% of the total, while BIPOC writers are 18.9%. The overall employment level for white screenwriters declined to 1,367 — a drop of 14.5% from 2020 to 2024 — while BIPOC screenwriters remained static, moving from 406 to 407 over that period. Within the BIPOC category, the report showed that Latinos remain the most significantly underrepresented group. The report found that Latinos make up 4.5% of TV writers and 2.5% of film writers. Latinos are 19.4% of the U.S. population. The report also found that while TV is more diverse than film, there is significant stratification within writing staffs. At the lower levels, 60.2% are BIPOC and 27.5% are white. At the upper levels — EPs and showrunners — 56.9% are white and 25.2% are BIPOC. The study is based on self-reported data from the WGA East and West. About 16% of writers declined to identify their race or ethnicity. An earlier report charted a dramatic change since 2010, when 86.4% of TV writers and 94.8% of film writers were white. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SAG-AFTRA prez Fran Drescher wants Trump to trade tariffs for tax breaks
It's the 'Nanny' plan. In May Donald Trump famously announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made movies in an attempt to prevent the 'very fast death' of Hollywood. Now SAG-AFTRA president and 'The Nanny' star Fran Drescher says that tax breaks would be a better way to make Tinseltown competitive than tariffs. 'I'm trying to work right now on the tax abatements with President Trump to make sure our industry gets the tax abatement that we need to compete with other countries,' she revealed in an interview at The New York Women's Foundation Celebrating Women Breakfast, where she was honored this week. 'Our president is a businessman. He undersands the bottom line. And, it's very difficult to discourage business from going outside of our borders if it's not economically affordable,' she said. On May 4, President Trump announced he wanted to meet with Hollywood insiders to discuss implementing the levy on foreign-made films to help boost the US industry, which is still recovering from the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strike. 'Hollywood doesn't do very much of that business. They have the nice sign, and everything's good, but they don't do very much,' Trump told reporters gatherred at the Oval Office at the time. He wrote on his Truth Social app that, 'The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated.' Drescher, however, believes, 'If we get the tax abatement, that will solve the problem,' she said. 'We won't need tariffs…. So, let's get those tax abatements to create an environment in the United States that makes it as appealing as it is in some other nations to produce, and then the problem will be solved,' she said. A SAG-AFTRA spokesperson told us, 'A coalition of industry unions, of which SAG-AFTRA is one, along with MPA and the Hollywood Ambassadors are working on this issue.'
Engadget
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
How Murderbot's Chris and Paul Weitz adapted All Systems Red for TV
For Paul and Chris Weirtz, Murderbot — the upcoming TV adaptation of Martha Wells' sci-fi novella All Systems Red — was an experiment: Can you have a hero who tries to do nothing? The 10-episode sci-fi series , which debuts May 16 on Apple TV+, follows an anxious security robot (Alexander Skarsgård) assigned to protect a survey group on a planetary mission. As the mission progresses and deadly surprises emerge, Murderbot grapples with concealing its capacity for free will — an ability enabled when it hacked its governor module — and its insecurities around humans, all while navigating existential questions about its purpose in the universe. Above all, though, Murderbot wishes it could spend its days simply viewing the 7,532 hours of video content it secretly squirreled away in its system for entertainment — a true media junkie, like most of the show's viewers. Bringing All Systems Red to TV took years, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Writers Guild of America strike in 2023. But with support from Apple TV+'s head of worldwide video Jamie Erlicht, a fan of Wells' work, Paul and Chris chipped away at the show's scripts, sending every version to Wells for feedback. (Wells, as a consulting producer, ultimately weighed in on other aspects of the project, including design and casting.) The series stays faithful to All Systems Red — the first of several books and short stories comprising The Murderbot Diaries — in most of the ways that count. The plot largely follows that of the novella, but also makes substantial additions. Members of the PresAux survey group which Murderbot protects, including Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), Pin-lee (Sabrina Wu), Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), Arada (Tattiawna Jones) and Bharadwaj (Tamara Pdoemski), now have more nuance and deeper backstories. The Preservation Alliance, an independent group of planets which the PresAux survey group hails from, is now eccentric, even downright bohemian. During Murderbot's season premiere, PresAux holds hands in a meditative circle, eyes closed, deliberating over whether to rent the refurbished Murderbot for their mission. Soon after landing on the planet, they dance in the desert, their bodies heaving, arms waving to the music's beat — little touches inspired by aspects of Chris's two decades of experience with Burning Man. (Several members of the mission also find themselves navigating the particular dramas of polyamory.) 'We also wanted a sense of these people being out of their element and out of their social setting,' Chris told Engadget. 'They're in the corporation rim, which is a really brutal, extractive capitalist world, but these people are egalitarians from outside of that system. They are [seen as] freaks not just to Murderbot, but to the corporation flunkies who are upselling them.' While Murderbot's favorite TV series, The Rise & Fall of Sanctuary Moon, is referenced in Wells' novel, in Murderbot, the futuristic soap opera is its own fleshed out universe – a bonafide show-within-a-show. Intended as a parody of classic sci-fi, most obviously the original Star Trek series, Sanctuary Moon's scenes are rife with heavily saturated sets and gaudy costumes. John Cho, as the captain of a starship, falls madly in love with a navigation systems robot (DeWanda Wise); Jack McBrayer portrays a navigation officer out of his depth. Their performances are comically over-the-top, but that's the point. 'I have a theory that people think of good acting as being very restrained, and that is the case often, but my theory is that humans are emoting maniacs all the time. They're hamming it up in front of the mirror, in their bathroom,' Paul said. 'There was something great about being able to enter a David Lynch-like telenovela world and do the sci-fi version of those things.' Casting the droll but irreverent character of Murderbot took time. Part-human, it experiences a full range of emotions but struggles with deep-seated social anxiety, and detests showing its face to humans — which may help explain why the character has become popular with members of the neurodivergent community. Skarsgård, whose diverse acting resume includes a Viking prince in The Northman , a ruthless tech CEO in Succession , the titular character in The Legend of Tarzan and a physically abusive husband on Big Little Lies, had traits and experiences Paul and Chris felt were essential for effectively playing the show's central character. As one might expect for a security robot, Paul Weisz noted Skarsgård is "physically imposing.' "You get the sense maybe he could kill somebody," said Paul. But much like the titular character Paul felt this sometimes terrifying exterior belied something much more nuanced. "Alexander also has a really quirky sense of humor. His mind is very different from his body. He's really unique.' Bringing in Cho and McBrayer for their roles in the Sanctuary Moon scenes wasn't nearly as intensive a search; Cho and the Weitz brothers had worked on several projects together over the years . 'It's like a Faustian bargain when you work with us once, that we're probably going to get your home cellphone,' Paul mused. 'Jack McBrayer is best friends with Alexander, so that was the route to [him]. In terms of John, we worked with him first on American Pie , and I think we've done 12 things in different ways with him over the years. So it's a little like The Godfather where it's like, someday , I'm going to ask you for a favor.' Filmed in Ontario, production started in 2024, lasting six months. Shooting the show's planetary scenes meant scouring for locations like mining quarries, slag heaps and abandoned factories. Interior shots for scenes at Port Freecommerce, a vast star base, in the season premiere were filmed on soundstages in Toronto. All along, Paul and Chris set out to present a far-flung universe seen less often on screen in recent years. Shirking the dark, grim aesthetic heavily favored in many more recent sci-fi TV and film projects, they worked with production designer Sue Chan to create a universe dominated by bright lighting, white and gray sets, light-colored fabrics and colorful patterns. 'We drew on the wellspring of science fiction we read when we were kids and on science fiction paperback covers of the 1980s, which always seemed to have such great concept design and a bright, interesting world in which to lose yourself,' Paul recalled. 'Specifically, it seemed like since this was a world that was dominated by corporations, there'd be a lot of logos everywhere. There'd be a cheapness to a lot of what was manufactured. Also, if you look around, there are a lot of things that seem to have been extruded by giant 3-D printers. Even the food is extruded by 3-D printers.' Designing Murderbot's armor was a collaborative process with the costume department, led by costume designer Carrie Grace and specialty costume designer Laura Jean Shannon. To start, they looked at helmets from virtually every well-known robot depicted in military and sci-fi movies from the last 50 years. Initial designs resembled Star Wars stormtroopers, but Skarsgård 'really pushed' for the robot's look to be 'something unique,' according to Paul. Drawing inspiration from The Little Rascals ' Petey, who had a large black circle around one of his eyes, the team built a large, distinctive black eye piece into Murderbot's helmet visor. Murderbot spends much of its time clad in armor, but it also has downtime when the armor comes off, revealing an impossibly smooth humanoid form resembling Mattel's Ken dolls. To achieve that look, Skarsgård regularly waxed his entire body during filming. 'Alexander actually volunteered to have his body waxed, because he thought it was what would be best for the character,' Chris recalled. 'I remember discussing it with him, and I said, 'Listen, man, I don't know if people are even going to notice , but it might make just a tiny bit of difference in terms of the believability of the character.'" '[Alexander's] like, 'Yeah, I should wax myself,'' Chris continued. 'Then for the next five, six months, he had to do that every week until he realized eventually that his next role was to play a hairy biker [in the romance drama Pillion ].' In Murderbot , Paul and Chris saw more than a quirky sci-fi novella — they saw a deeply human story wrapped in armor and deadpan humor. Their TV adaptation doesn't just bring Wells' world to screen with panache, it leans into the quiet radicalism of a character who resists heroism, craves isolation and struggles to navigate the messiness of human connection. That emotional core — unexpected, thoughtful, and entirely sincere — is what makes Murderbot more than just another sci-fi romp. It's a mirror for our most vulnerable selves, disguised as a robot who'd really rather be watching TV.
The Hindu
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Robert Benton, Oscar-winning director of ‘Kramer vs. Kramer', dies at 92
Robert Benton, the three-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker known for directing the 1979 best picture winner Kramer vs. Kramer and co-writing the groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde, died Sunday in Manhattan. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his assistant and manager, Marisa Forzano. Benton's career spanned more than four decades, during which he earned acclaim for both his writing and directing. Beginning his professional life as art director at Esquire magazine, Benton partnered early with colleague David Newman. Their writing collaboration led to the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, which, after initial rejections, became a cultural landmark and earned them an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Benton made his directorial debut with 1972's Bad Company and gained wider recognition with The Late Show (1977), a noir-tinged detective film starring Art Carney and Lily Tomlin. His major breakthrough came with Kramer vs. Kramer, a drama about divorce and fatherhood starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director for Benton, and Best Adapted Screenplay. He continued to write and direct several character-driven dramas. Places in the Heart (1984), inspired by his Texas upbringing, earned him another Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and brought Sally Field her second Best Actress win. Later films included Nobody's Fool (1994), Twilight (1998), and The Human Stain (2003). While not all were box office successes, they were often praised for their strong performances and thoughtful writing. Throughout his career, Benton was recognized for his contributions to film. He received the Writers Guild of America's Ian McLellan Hunter Award in 1995 and the Laurel Award for screenwriting in 2007. Born in Waxahachie, Texas, Benton studied at the University of Texas and Columbia University. Before moving into film, he worked in publishing and aspired to be a painter. He is survived by his son, John.
