India’s Screenwriters Association Asks Members To Stop Work On U.S. Projects

deadline.com:

India’s Screenwriters Association (SWA) has expressed support for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike and asked its members to down tools on U.S.

films and series. The SWA, the country’s major industry guild for writers with more than 57,000 members, emailed its membership on Thursday night to explain the WGA’s reasons for calling the strike and to state that the association “stands in complete solidarity with our 11,500 sisters and brothers of WGA.” “We ask all SWA members working on U.S.

shows and films to strengthen their protest by stopping work on those, and to not accept any new writing work from the companies in the US affiliated to AMPTP [Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers],” the SWA said in an email signed by SWA General Secretary Zaman Habib. “If the WGA strike succeeds, it helps our efforts, by setting a precedent.

After all, we shall be negotiating with the Indian subsidiaries of some of those companies,” the email continued. When contacted by Deadline, Anjum Rajabali (Rajneeti, The Legend Of Bhagat Singh), a veteran screenwriter and SWA Executive Committee member, clarified that the association isn’t currently asking its members to stop work on shows produced by the Indian subsidiaries of companies such as Netflix, Disney and Amazon.