How the streaming revolution upended Hollywood, sparked the 2023 W.G.A. strike, and made Netflix executive Ted Sarandos a key power broker

By Noam Scheiber

Representatives of the Writers Guild of America believed they were on the verge of ending a months-long strike when they filed into the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel in August 2023 to meet with four studio executives.

The studios had made a proposal a few weeks earlier that, while still far away from where the writers hoped to land, at least bowed in principle to some of their key demands, like minimum staffing requirements. Then, when the writers turned up at the Luxe, they found at least one of the C.E.O.’s, David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery, exceedingly solicitous and keen to engage. READ ON