Contract talks between Hollywood screenwriters and film studios headed right down to the wire on Monday, leaving the specter of the primary strike in additional than 15 years hanging over the business.

The 11,500-member Writers Guild of America authorised a strike in mid-April, arguing that studios should agree to vary pay and office practices which have taken root within the streaming period. If the 2 sides fail to achieve a deal by midnight in Los Angeles, a strike might start as quickly as Tuesday — although talks might proceed previous the deadline if there’s progress.

Simon Pulman, a associate on the media and leisure group at regulation agency Pryor Cashman, mentioned dealmaking exercise had been “frantic” as brokers and attorneys attempt to wrap up enterprise earlier than exercise in Hollywood grinds to a halt.

“It appears greater than probably that there will probably be a strike,” Pulman mentioned. The query many in Hollywood are asking, he added, was how lengthy it could final. The final time writers went on strike was in 2007, bringing Hollywood to a standstill for 100 days and costing the California economic system an estimated $2bn.

The influence of a strike would fall first on stay tv programming, together with late-night chat reveals, adopted by streaming programming. Theatrical movies, which have longer lead instances, can be the final to be affected.

Writers argue that it’s tougher to make a residing within the streaming period since they earn far lower than they did within the conventional TV enterprise. Within the conventional US community TV mannequin, writers produced about 22 scripts per season and have been eligible to earn royalties on their reveals. Nevertheless, streaming sequence are a lot shorter, typically eight to 10 episodes, and alternatives to earn royalties are scarce.

Studios have additionally decreased the variety of writers on reveals in some circumstances. The writers union is taking purpose on the “mini-room” — small teams that rapidly produce scripts for potential reveals.

Ted Sarandos, co-chief government of Netflix, advised traders final month that the corporate was working “work actually exhausting to ensure we might discover a good and equitable deal so we will keep away from” a strike.

However he added that the corporate’s reservoir of worldwide programming would insulate it from among the influence. “If there’s [a strike], we’ve a big base of upcoming reveals and movies from world wide [so] that we might most likely serve our members higher than most . . . we do have a reasonably strong slate of releases to take us into a very long time.”