Atlanta Picket Shuts Down Peacock's 'Hysteria!'
David Mccullough The Writers Guild of America has opened a new front in its targeted pickets of TV and movie productions: Georgia.
Striking writers on Wednesday picketed outside soundstages in Atlanta where Peacock‘s upcoming series Hysteria! is in production. The action is the first time striking writers and their allies have used targeted pickets to shut down filming in Georgia. Sources confirm that production on Hysteria!, a 1980s-set thriller set against the backdrop of that decade’s “Satanic Panic,” has hit pause (though it’s not clear for how long).
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Five weeks into the strike, the guild has shifted its strategy somewhat to encompass both the targeted actions against productions and pickets outside studio lots and corporate offices in Los Angeles and New York. “We want to disrupt as much as we can,” veteran showrunner and WGA-East strike captain Warren Leight told The Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top 5 podcast. “The guild realizes that this is a pretty powerful thing. If the whole point is to empty the [programming] pipeline, the AMPTP knows they have to come back to the [bargaining] table. The quickest way to empty the pipeline is not to wait until all the shows are shot but to stop the shows from shooting.”
The targeted pickets aim to stop other industry unions from crossing lines; Teamsters and IATSE members have honored the lines, leading to shutdowns on productions including Showtime’s The Chi in Chicago and Billions in New York, Apple TV+’s Loot in Los Angeles and feature films Good Fortune from Lionsgate and Thunderbolts from Marvel. Adding Atlanta to the list of targets widens the geographic scope for the guild.
Studios can lose $200,000 to $300,000 per day when filming shuts down, and multiple executives acknowledged to THR that the targeted strike actions have been “effective.”
The Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, representing media companies, have yet to resume negotiations. The AMPTP is currently in talks with the Directors Guild of America, whose contract is up at the end of June, while actors union SAG-AFTRA is conducting a strike authorization vote among its members. Its agreement with studios is also up on June 30.
