'Rings of Power' Season 2 Pushing Forward Without Creative Execs During Writers Strike

Since the beginning of May, Hollywood writers have been on strike. This strike is a labor dispute between the Writers Guild of America, the WGA, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The last time such a strike happened was during the Covid-19 pandemic, making it a significant event in television history.

But what this strike is about? Well, all the writers want the same rights. For that, they created the Minimum Basic Agreement, establishing a minimum wage for television and film writers. This already exists for people who write for broadcast television shows but not for streaming writers. So the streaming writers need to negotiate with the streaming company to get a decent income, and they think It's unfair, contrary to broadcast television, which has more rules. And we can understand them since streaming shows are as famous as broadcast shows today since more and more people choose to watch streaming platforms instead of TV. And unfortunately, this will impact a famous TV show on Amazon Prime, "Rings Of Power."

While "House of the Dragon" Season 2 announced that everything is ready for filming and that they don't need the writers anymore to start filming since the rewriting is already done, it is more complicated for "Rings of Power" Season 2 since not only the writers left the set, but also the showrunners J.D Payne and Patrick McKay who decided to not be there for the rest of the filming which still has 19 days left. It also means that if any problems and a scene don't work during the filming, they cannot rewrite anything at the last moment. And this means other people will have to make that decision, which is not the best to please the writers who worked hard on the show.

However, even though they could not rewrite anything at the last moment, they left some instructions so the filming could finish in the best conditions even though they weren't here. And when we hear that, it seems they didn't want to quit the set. And that's right, simply because they had no choice. Regarding the rules of the Writers Guild Of America, which represents the 11.500 screenwriters, authors cannot participate in the production. So they cannot make creative decisions on a set, and this includes, of course, showrunners that are at the center of the writing process in the story room.

Setting in the UK, the filming will then end with the directors of the show and the notes they got from the showrunners before they left the set. And it seems tragic when you hear it, but fortunately, the two showrunners knew this would happen.

As already said, only three weeks will be filmed without the showrunners, while the filming for "Rings of Power" started in October 2022 with all the staff. More than that, even though these three weeks were crucial, the showrunners knew that this would happen, so the notes they let to the directors and the staff were not last-minute notes written in panic when they learned the news. Instead, these are long, precise letters written before the Writer's strike was announced.

So, to be clear, this is good news for the show's fans since their absence will not impact the filming from what we hear since the scripts are already full of notes. It is even said that their presence was not mandatory during the filming since everything was already written in their hands. The directors had to be directors and make their artistic decisions along with the showrunners' notes. But even though the filming of this show will end well, it is not the case for the rest of the TV production.

The strike is supposed to last until the 30th of June when the major Hollywood production companies are supposed to sign an agreement for the Minimum Basic Agreement, which means two months without any writers in a story room to write TV shows. And it is a catastrophe since the productions are already very late because of Covid. So let's hope the Writers Guild of America and the production companies sign a new agreement together.