Marvel's Exploitative TV Tactics Could Lead To Bob Iger's Worst MCU Nightmare
Guaranteed work in the entertainment industry has never been a sure thing, no matter how many high-profile projects one might find oneself attached to. This industry-wide lack of security offered to entertainment writers stands among other key issues paramount to the WGA strike.
It appears that pre-strike, Marvel Studios may have been shorting more than their writing staff — all of this according to one story editor and writer. J. Holtham, speaking to PopVerse in June of 2023, claimed brief writing contracts kept him bouncing from one MCU room to the next, and that he witnessed a pay discrepancy issue while working on two popular Marvel series. He said executive producers working for "Jessica Jones" – individuals who were promoted from their positions on the writing team — were making less than he did.
"When I was a staff writer on Cloak and Dagger, I was on a strict 20-week contract," he said, indicating that he made $4,000 a week for that gig. A move to "Jessica Jones," where he was a story editor, improved his take to $8,000 a week. Twenty weeks later, he was back on "Cloak & Dagger."
"In that time the Executive Producers I worked for on Jessica Jones were only on Jessica Jones for all of that time. I made more money as a story editor than they made as EPs in that time," Holtham continued.
When one takes into account Disney CEO Bob Iger's March 2023 comments about the company's plan to change the frequency of the release of original Disney+ projects and his wish to license some originals to third-party streamers, strike-based labor demands from his Marvel-related writing teams just might be his worst MCU-adjacent nightmare incarnate. And it definitely isn't the only labor headache Marvel Studios has come up against in recent months.
This isn't the first time Marvel Studios has dealt with labor-based controversy
J. Holtham added that mini rooms — a small room made of three or more staffers who work for a brief amount of time compared to series writers – are making the lives of writers and showrunners much more difficult. Since mini rooms run for a much shorter duration, there are no writers about to help showrunners actually do the hard work of breaking ideas down into actual dialogue. "If you're the showrunner you might just be writing all the episodes yourself, covering set yourself, covering production yourself, and everything gets amortized down," he said.
This isn't the first time Marvel Studios has come under fire for allegedly exploitative labor practices. In 2022,stories of mistreatment from VFX professionals previously hired by Marvel began to surface. Lower pay by industry standards — a January 2023 report by Vulture indicated that Marvel pays 20% less on a weekly basis compared to other studios — as well as overwork and bullying were cited as major concerns.
The double strike has pushed at least two Marvel Studios releases from the autumn 2023 schedule. The drop date for "Agatha: Darkhold Diaries" has been moved all the way to the fall of 2024, while "What If...? Echo" will debut around January 2024. Projects like "Ironheart" are in post-production and will not be completed until the strike is over, while "Daredevil: Born Again" was paused mid-shooting. With Bob Iger's new series-related edict in mind, viewers will have to wait and see what surfaces when the strikes wrap.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. To learn more about why writers and actors are currently on strike, click here for an up-to-date explainer from our Looper team.