After launching the Strike Talk podcast with producer Todd Garner to give WGA strikers comfort in the early days of 2023’s labor unrest, Billy Ray is signing off. When you are an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and a director and producer to boot, you’ve got to go back to work at some point. No one expected it to go 30 weeks, but Ray threw himself into each installment, from landing guests who demystified the process, and down to its editing. It’s as if he was making a weekly series episode or a movie. It was all for his love for fellow practitioners of the writing craft, and his need to sound an alarm on how a failed negotiation over wages, AI and the shrinking of writer rooms would endanger an ecosystem that has fueled brilliant writing on series and films for decades. Here, he teams with Deadline co-editor Mike Fleming Jr. to discuss what might happen going forward, with mergers still reshaping the Hollywood landscape, and a battle brewing just up the road with IATSE and Teamsters as their deals expire this summer. Deadline offers gratitude to Ray, and to Garner, for their selfless dedication to making this such a great ride.
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