The Writers Strike has set its sights on Marvel’s newest project as they continue to push for better pay across Hollywood.
On May 2, approximately 11,000 writers across television and film abandoned their keyboards after negotiations for fairer pay went awry.
Now, striking writers are forming picket lines outside some of the industry’s biggest studios – including the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, where Screen Actors Guild members were joined by a donut-bearing Jay Leno earlier this week.
Other than film studios, some writers are picketing active film sets. The latest target? Marvel’s newest Disney+ series, Wonder Man.
A crowd gathered outside its shooting location, with its numbers including journalist Hasan Piker and comedian Adam Conover.
In a video shared on Twitter by OS2NOX, Conover noted that if strikers managed to successfully “shut this shoot down,” Disney could possibly “lose a couple hundred thousand bucks.”
Hasan Piker and Adam Conover are striking for the WGA outside of a Disney+ shoot for the Wonder Man TV show right now.
"If we shut this shoot down, Disney is going to lose a couple hundred thousand bucks. The more of these we shut down the sooner the strike ends." #WGAStrike pic.twitter.com/KlAqds4o69
— ostonox (@OS2NOX) May 4, 2023
Not only that, but it could have a ripple effect on the industry and nudge along pay negotiations. “The more of these we shut down, the sooner the strike ends,” Conover said.
According to now-deleted tweets from writer and producer Alex Blagg, the picket line successfully “[shut] down a Marvel location shoot in Hollywood” while Writers Guild members chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, this corporate greed has got to go.”
The strike doesn’t just impact the initial writing process. Staff writers are usually on set to provide rewrites on the spot or to tackle any issues like continuity. A show or film may literally have a shooting script, but there’s a much higher likelihood of the final product ending up less polished than usual. For proof, just see the media impacted by the last Writers Strike from 2007 to 2008, such as Heroes and Quantum of Solace (2008).
Considering that Wonder Man only started filming in April, it seems inevitable that it’ll bear the brunt of the Writers Strike’s repercussions. But that’s the whole point. The more disruption it causes, the more the industry will value the underpaid work of its most creative thinkers.
Wonder Man stars Yahya Abdul Mateen II as Simon Williams, whose alter-ego is the show’s superpowered titular character. Other Marvel properties expected to be impacted by the Writers Strike include Thunderbolts (2024), Blade (2024), Captain America: New World Order (2024), and Agatha: Coven of Chaos.