Writers differ on obeying strike rule
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To comply or not to comply: That is the question. One of the Writers Guild membership’s most contentious issues in the strike’s early going has been Strike Rule No. 8, or the Script Validation Program, which compels writers to submit copies to the Writers Guild of all their works in progress for struck companies.
The WGA policy is an effort to prevent scabbing, or continuing to write on projects for struck studios and networks during the strike, by having a record of where the writer was in the work when the strike began. But the studios threatened legal action against any writers who gave proprietary content to a third party, and many industry talent lawyers advised their writing clients not to abide by the rule. Writer message boards lighted up with concerns about how to bridge the impasse as the deadline to hand in material to the guild approached last Thursday.
Read the rest of Jay A. Fernandez’ Scriptland column--a regular feature on Hollywood scribes--here: