A few months ago, we explored how rising tensions between screenwriters and the content studios that employ them could impact Creative Artists Agency, which at the time was seeking to extend its term loan.

In the end, CAA got its extension — and just in time, because the situation has snowballed since then. The Writers’ Guild of America began striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in May, and was joined last month by the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA.

This wave of industrial action has become the most disruptive event to hit television and film production since the Covid pandemic, and the WGA strike is now projected to outlast the industry’s last major strike in 2007 to 2008, which lasted 99 days.

Today, the unions and the studios are butting heads over two main issues: updating contracts for the age of streaming, and protecting human writers and actors in preparation for the age of artificial intelligence.

Perhaps inevitably for a strike led by writers, a lot of the rhetoric around this industrial action is quite punchy. Here’s Mark Blutman, an Emmy-winning writer and 33-year WGA veteran, comparing the unchecked growth of streaming to the pre-2007 housing bubble:

“If you’re trying to understand what’s going on in the streaming business right now, go watch The Big Short and every time they say ‘housing market’, replace it with ‘streaming’,” he said in an interview with 9fin.

He’s not the only one sounding off: over recent weeks, everyone from George R.R. Martin (the strike will be “long and bitter”) to California governor Gavin Newsom (who wants to help broker a deal) have lined up to offer their take.

There’s a lot of noise out there. To help cut through it, we created a primer on how the strikes could impact several credits in the leveraged finance universe: