Frank D. Gilroy, the daddy of Andor creator Tony Gilroy, went on strike in 1960. The elder Gilroy, a Bronx-born screenwriter who would later win a Pulitzer Prize for his play The Subject Was Roses, was a part of the union effort that secured residual funds for screenwriters for tv reruns. That strike was additionally the final time, previous to this 12 months, that Hollywood writers and actors walked off the job on the similar time. Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild. Tony Gilroy was 4 years outdated.

Last weekend, the youthful Gilroy grabbed a microphone on a New York City sidewalk to inform the story of how the “Writers Guild and SAG linked arms … and that sacrifice was to win all this shit we take for granted.” He additionally spoke of how earlier Hollywood strikes—these after 1960—tried to wrest residuals for the gross sales of VHS, on-demand, and cable. At every flip, the Michael Clayton author argued, the studios would counter that some new expertise—DVDs, streaming—had disrupted the business and that writers ought to wait whereas the studios adjusted.

During the final huge writers’ strike, the one which led to 2008 after 100 days, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reached agreements that gave the guild some jurisdiction over compensation for content material streamed on-line. Writers obtained about 1 to 2 % of the gross, relying on elements like whether or not the content material was rented on (then) iTunes or streamed on an ad-supported platform.

“In 2007,” Gilroy stated, “they asked us to pretend we didn’t know what the internet was. That shit’s over; that show is done.”

Gilroy would know, significantly now that he makes a present about rebelling in opposition to a large empire, which streams on Disney+. Last month, after Andor was nominated for eight Emmys, IndieWire writer Proma Khosla asked the showrunner about its viewership, which has all the time appeared on the low finish for a Star Wars present. “One of the central issues of this entire labor experience is that I don’t have any idea what the audience is … I think the obscurity of data doesn’t help anyone.” (Ironically, Disney+ sent out data this week revealing that the premiere episode of the most recent Star Wars sequence, Ahsoka, garnered 14 million views in 5 days.)

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Audience is, for sure, extra essential now than ever. As streaming companies have repeatedly shuffled what exhibits and flicks can be found the place, attracting a fan base has gotten difficult. At the identical time, fandoms for streamers’ extra area of interest content material have grown extra ardent. Flash mobs showed up in Times Square to protest Netflix’s cancelation of The OA. At this 12 months’s Comic-Con International, cosplayers walked round carrying buttons that stated “This Character Wouldn’t Exist WIthout WGA and SAG-AFTRA Labor”—a present of help for the placing writers and actors who didn’t attend the occasion.