While the current WGA strike aimed only began early this month, Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ronald D. Moore said that he has been aware of the issues the writers are facing since they were asked to come up with the show’s webisodes last year.
The online ten-part series, entitled Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance, follows the events that take place between the end of the second season and the beginning of the third. When the studio approached Moore about the webisodes, they made it clear that they would not be willing to pay anyone involved in the production, as they were planning to use it as promotional material only.
“They weren’t going to pay any of the writers or the actors or the directors to do it, which we thought was crazy,” Moore told E! Entertainment from the picket lines last week.
Because of the lack of proper compensation, Moore and his team refused to do the webisodes. However, after some time, the studio relented and agreed to pay them for their work.
As they were nearing the end of production for the Battlestar Galactica webisodes, Moore and his team were hit with another devastating blow. They were told that none of the writers of the project was going to be credited.
“They weren’t going to acknowledge anybody who wrote it,” Moore explained, adding that even as he “refused to deliver the webisodes… they came and took them anyway, which is their right since they own the show… but it really made me aware of these issues.”
According to SyFy Portal, the WGA intervened in the situation at the time when the Battlestar Galactica webisodes were about to be released. The guild, which is made up of the West and East factions, demanded that the SCI-FI Channel compensate and give due credit to the writers, or else refrain from launching the webisodes. Ignoring WGA’s demands, the network went ahead and released the webisodes anyway.
The unfair treatment of the writers at the hands of the studios and networks is what ultimately sparked the ongoing strike, Moore said.
“I mean, my staff writer, who is the lowest man on the totem pole, they want him to do all this work for another media, not pay him for it, and then make money off of his work,” he said. “Ultimately, that’s why we’re here, because that’s just wrong.”
-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: E! Online, SyFy Portal
(Image Courtesy of IGN)
Staff Columnist, BuddyTV
