Films most affected by the 2007 writers’ strike

Fifteen years after the last union action, which influenced Hollywood in many ways, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has called for another strike.

When Hollywood screenwriters went on strike for 14 weeks in 2007-2008 over unfair royalty practices, the studios went into a nervous breakdown, rushing half-finished films into production and praying that no one would pay attention to the silly puns on paper.

Read more: WGA explains the enormous disagreements that led to the strike (Variety, 3 minutes reading time)

They were wrong, and several films that came out in 2008/2009 were crap because of it. It quickly became fashionable to blame every disappointing or underperforming film of that period on the screenwriters’ strike: Here are the films that ended the strike…

Quantum of Solace

After Marc Forster’s Bond sequel Quantum of Solace went back to the basics in Casino Royale, many were disappointed with it. It seemed much more combative and weaker than Martin Campbell’s economical and uncompromising reboot. The reason for this was apparently the scriptwriters’ strike, which made it impossible for Forster and co. to rewrite scenes spontaneously.

Read more: How Quantum of Solace sought closure as the first real sequel to 007

“I wrote the script myself,” said Daniel Craig in 2012, admitting that Paul Haggis’ original script arrived just two hours before the strike began. “We were screwed,” the actor said. “We had a rough script and then a writers’ strike came along and we couldn’t do anything. There I was, trying to rewrite scenes, even though I’m not a writer.”

Director Marc Forster later admitted that he had considered abandoning filming due to time constraints.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There’s a joke in one of the later seasons of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon glances at a poster for Transformers 5 that cheekily reads “Not written by anyone.” This is actually the situation the producers of the second Transformers film found themselves in when the strike limited work on the script by Alex Kurtzman Roberto Orci, which actually contained more guidelines than a printed version.

The only man who could fill the gap? Director Michael Bay, a man for whom actions speak louder than words. Bay filled in the gaps in the plot himself, but later called the film “crap” and admitted, “It was just awful to make a film where you have to have a story in three weeks.” Despite this, Revenge grossed almost a billion dollars worldwide, thanks to the explosions.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Although you’d never know from watching it that the script was written in a rush (LOL, just kidding, it’s awful), the very first X-Men spin-off film was written at 1,000 mph by a studio that was desperate to get it finished before the writers’ strike began. Rumor has it that the film went into production before the script was finished, and the shooting schedule was extended to accommodate revisions completed after the strike.

To make matters worse, a version of the film without any effects was leaked before release. Fox must have been making excuses in anticipation of the inevitable disaster, but the film still made a respectable £250 million worldwide. Never forget: Wolverine is invulnerable.

GI Joe – The Rise of Cobra

Wait, there was a script for this film? There was, but Stuart Beattie wrote it as the screenwriters’ strike was looming. Producer Laurence di Bonaventura said at the time: “Given what’s at stake and the time we have left, our screenwriters work under inhuman pressure on every project.”

Fittingly, the finished film was inhumanly bad, suggesting that Beattie’s turbo-charged script was overlooked in favor of crayon drawings of explosions cobbled together by director Stephen Sommers before his afternoon nap. This was, after all, a movie in which ice sinks into water and Channing Tatum tries to beat up a hologram.

Terminator: Salvation

The real reason Christian Bale got so angry on the set of Terminator Salvation? He knew it was going to be a disaster: the production had been struggling from day one, and no amount of technical blunders he encountered could change the fact that the script had to be finished in a hurry to be ready before the screenwriters’ strike.

Read more: McG announces “darker version” of “Salvation”

McG stated publicly that the script had to be rewritten from scratch, but he didn’t have time to do it: the strike ended in February 2008 and filming on his movie began in May. Jonah Nolan did manage to turn out a revised script in those three months, but the ticking of time didn’t exactly help Terminator Salvation. Terminator: Genisys redeemed it as the worst Terminator movie, a movie so bad that we wanted to attack the writers.

Star Trek

Although the script for JJ Abrams’ space adventure was finished before the writers’ strike began, the director found himself in a strange situation during filming. He and screenwriter Damon Lindelof came up with funny alternative dialogue during filming, but since both men were members of the Writers Guild of America, they couldn’t shoot the extra takes because it would have violated strike rules.

Okay, the odd witty remark from Kirk didn’t necessarily hurt the film, but no director likes to feel gagged when it comes to gags.

Angels and demons

It takes a team of cryptologists months and months to decode Dan Brown’s texts, but Sony found itself in a predicament when it came to bringing The Da Vinci Code sequel Illuminati to the screen. Unlike everyone else on this list, they didn’t rush a half-finished script into production, instead delaying the film six months after its December 2008 release date to allow more time to rework the script.

Admirable, but during those six months, audience interest in anything by Dan Brown declined sharply: Outdone by bigger, bolder, and less library-oriented summer blockbusters, Illuminati significantly disappointed audiences upon its final release.

Dragon Ball Evolution

Rumor has it that the only reason the awful Dragon Ball Evolution exists is because Hollywood’s writers were laying off their writers. Fox supposedly realized that with a big hole in their schedule, they could get a movie – any movie – into production, and the tattered old script for a Dragon Ball movie was available after gathering dust in the corner since 2002.

The film was made, then dismissed as terrible, and then completely forgotten until this moment, so excuse me for reminding you of its existence. This film is the worst thing that could have happened because of the screenwriters’ strike.

Watch: The writers’ strike explained