This is a complicated situation.
One of the contract stipulations WGA writers are striking for is a mandatory minimum of writers hired for TV projects — an effort to stave off the potential for producers and studios to fill up the seats with AI bots. Taylor Sheridan, a former character actor turned rare TV scribe who writes entire seasons of Yellowstone and more by himself, is caught in that crossfire.
“The freedom of the artist to create must be unfettered,” Sheridan said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “If they tell me, ‘You’re going to have to write a check for $540,000 to four people to sit in a room that you never have to meet,’ then that’s between the studio and the guild. But if I have to check in creatively with others for a story I’ve wholly built in my brain, that would probably be the end of me telling TV stories.”
Obviously, there’s some strange nuance here. It’s not that Sheridan is blasting the WGA‘s proposed requirements. Sheridan said in the interview that he broadly supports the WGA strike, and it seems like he doesn’t care if the studio is willing to toss in half a mil for writers who won’t actually be writing on the show, but you can see where a studio might take issue with all that. An immovable object and an unstoppable force meeting. If the WGA gets its demands met to safeguard their careers, and studios balk at the idea of paying writers to sit around, Sheridan might find himself heading for greener pastures.
(via The Hollywood Reporter)