According to data compiled by FilmLA, the city and county film permit office, no scripted TV series were shooting in Los Angeles for the second week in a row due to the Writers Guild strike.
“On a typical week at this time of year, there will be dozens of scripted television projects in production. In contrast, we have no scripted TV series with permission to film this week,” said FilmLA spokesman Philip Sokolowski.
It was the same story last week as well. The week before that, only one scripted TV show had taken out a permit to film on-location here, after strike-hit weeks that saw just five, seven and nine permits – though many of those shows had won a permit because of the strike. Because production was stopped.
Overall, the number of location permits taken by film and TV projects fell 63.2% to 128 for the week ending June 11, compared to 348 for the same period a year earlier. FilmLA reported nearly identical numbers last week.
Sokolowski said, “These are the categories into which all written projects fall, although not all production within these categories is affected by labor action.” “Reality TV, as one example, still appears in these cases in addition to non-union independent films.”
The WGA began its strike on May 2 after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers failed to reach a satisfactory agreement. The guild’s main issues include significant increases in compensation, minimum staffing, length of employment, the establishment of viewer-based streaming residuals, and restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence to generate scripts.