By Hyojung Sun and Carolyn Hunter
While streaming giants are booming, the writers behind our favorite shows face a precarious financial future. Is the shift from residuals to one-off buyouts jeopardizing the next generation of creative storytelling?
We live in a golden age of television, driven by digital technology. With seemingly endless new shows and back catalogues available on platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, viewers have never had more to watch. But behind the scenes of this spectacular boom, the people who write the stories—the screenwriters—are facing a profound shift that is making their careers more precarious than ever.
A recent series of interviews with UK screenwriters reveals a stark reality: while streaming giants have created exciting new opportunities, they are rapidly dismantling the traditional financial safety nets that writers rely on, trading long-term security for a single, upfront payment.
The One-Off Payment
The advent of streaming platforms is poised to disrupt an industrial practice that has stood for over 70 years, dating back to the rise of television in the 1950s. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) was founded in part to ensure that writers receive accurate on-screen credit and appropriate compensation for their creative contributions. As new technology made the re-broadcasting of shows commonplace, ensuring that original creators received ongoing payment became crucial. This system, known as “residuals,” ensures a writer receives a series of payments—in addition to the original script fee—every time their work is re-aired, sold internationally, or distributed on a new platform. Residuals, albeit relatively modest to many writers, provide a vital income bridge during the long, uncertain periods between jobs. For some, they can be a pension fund. Beyond their economic value, residuals also represent an acknowledgement of the writer’s creative contribution.
Today, streaming platforms typically require writers to sign flat-fee buyout contracts. In this model, the company pays the screenwriter a slightly higher upfront fee—typically 100% to 145% of the initial script fee—in exchange for complete, perpetual ownership of the work. For writers, it’s effectively a one-off arrangement.
Once the show is commissioned by a streaming platform, the buyout fee is the only money the writers will ever receive for their work, even if the series becomes a global smash hit watched by hundreds of millions of people for the next decade. In other words, the value of the content becomes detached from the person who created it.
Why Do Writers Take the Deal?
Given the clear long-term loss, why are writers accepting these deals? Our recent report investigating this issue highlighted several factors that force the writer’s hand:
- Precarious Work: Writing is inherently an insecure profession. Development phases can last for years with little or no pay, and jobs are often feast or famine. An immediate, substantial buyout offers financial relief and stability right now, which can seem far more valuable than an unpredictable trickle of residuals years down the line.
- Unpredictable Residuals: Residuals were always volatile, but in the new global streaming environment, tracking repeat fees has become even murkier. It’s hard to bet on a future payment stream when you don’t even know if it will materialise.
- Power Imbalance: Streaming services hold immense power, offering writers the potential for global stardom. For a writer offered a life-changing opportunity, the choice is often to take the buyout or lose the job entirely. The asymmetrical power relations make meaningful negotiation for long-term pay nearly impossible for individuals.
The Lack of Transparency
Compounding the problem for screenwriters is a crippling lack of transparency.
Screenwriters found it incredibly challenging to quantify the impact of these changes on their earnings for two reasons:
- Secret Viewing Figures: Unlike traditional television broadcasters, streaming services refuse to release their viewing or subscription numbers. This secrecy makes it impossible for writers (or their agents) to accurately gauge the market value of their work or to argue for fair compensation based on the revenues generated by the show.
- Contract Confusion: Many writers admitted they lacked clarity on the details of their own contracts, often relying entirely on their agents to navigate the complex legalese and negotiate rates. This reliance is due, in part, to the sheer volume and complexity of the new contracts being dictated by global streamers.
The Double-Edged Sword
For writers, the arrival of streaming services has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, the demand for content is massive. Streaming services need to constantly feed their global subscriber base, opening up countless new slots for scripts that traditional UK broadcasters might never have commissioned.
On the other hand, the benefits of this boom are not shared equally. Streaming companies tend to produce shows with higher budgets and bigger scope, meaning they lean heavily on established, experienced screenwriters. The new work largely bypasses mid-career and emerging writers, making it harder than ever for new voices to break through and develop their skills.
This shift is not just about individual paychecks; it’s about the health of the entire industry. The movement toward flat-fee buyouts and prolonged periods of unpaid development work may lead to increased insecurity and precarity for screenwriters, reducing the ability to continue producing high-quality content over time.
Furthermore, this financial concentration at the top has a chilling effect on diversity and inclusion. While streaming platforms have broadened the content they air, the labour may become concentrated among a small group of highly experienced, and often less diverse, writers. As streaming is increasingly replacing traditional television, which once offered long-term series that nurtured emerging talent, new writers are losing the spaces where they could develop their skills. It may appear healthy on the surface now, but sooner or later, the talent pipeline may dry up, eventually leading to a drop in creative vitality for the whole industry.
What can be done to improve the industry?
To safeguard the future of British screenwriting and ensure the stream of original content continues, the report makes two key recommendations:
- Collective Strength: Freelance screenwriters need robust collective representation—similar to existing industry agreements—to negotiate standardized long-term payment structures with the powerful streaming platforms.
- Invest in Talent: The industry needs strong investment in dedicated training and development programs to support new and mid-career screenwriters, closing the emerging skill gap and ensuring that the next generation of storytellers can afford to start their careers.
This structural change means the financial success of a show now only benefits the platform, not the creative people who conceived it. If we want diverse, innovative British stories, we must ensure the writers who create them can build sustainable, long-term careers.