Now in its second week, the WGA strike has shut down productions, pushed back release dates and, perhaps worst of all to some, given Judd Apatow another platform. Apatow has come out swinging at the studios, saying they not only have the endgame planned out for the strike, but even the exact date it will end. Sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory, no, Judd?
Speaking with Variety, Judd Apatow said of the strike, “I think they probably already know what they’re going to bend on…I would assume they already know what date this is going to end. They’ve probably been planning this for years.” He added, “I always think that whatever happens, they could have figured it out already. When these things conclude, you never go, ‘I understand why it took that long.’ It’s never something so inventive, and groundbreaking, that you think, ‘Oh, people needed to go to war for months over it.’ It’s always a very obvious position…So that’s what’s scary about it is that there is a solution but I’m not sure that all of the business interests are interested in getting to it quickly.”
Obviously Judd Apatow is in major support of the Writers Guild of America strike, but his hot takes about the industry have mostly backfired in the past, with the writer/director coming off as holier-than-thou and as if he’s the foremost authority on the matter. After all, this is the guy who brought us The Bubble, in which this ego got out of control in a whole new way, resulting in his worst movie.
Elaborating on why there is a strike in the first place, Judd Apatow said, “We have a system now that that does not reward success for a lot of these projects…If you make something and a billion people watch it, you don’t make more money than if it was a disaster, right? That’s not good for creativity because it takes away a lot of the motivation for the creative people, because people work really hard to create some sort of cushion for their lives.” To date, Apatow has five WGA Award nominations, including two for Best Original Screenplay (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up).
What is your take on Judd Apatow’s comments on the Writers Guild of America strike? Does he make any valid points? Let us know below!
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