Featured Image Credit: Associated Press / Alamy. HBO.
Topics: Film and TV, Entertainment
Rachel Lang
Striking television writers across America are officially pens down and placards up, with a number of those revolting threatening to ruin the end of season four of Succession for viewers if their pay demands aren't met.
Multiple placards have been spotted across picket lines in New York and Los Angeles with funny barbs and demands for fairer work conditions, as well as several vowing to spoil the ending of the hit HBO show.
One sign read: "Pay your writers or we’ll spoil Succession."
Another stated: "Fair contract or we spoil Succession."
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A third didn't threaten to spoil the show, but instead made a spine-tingling real-life comparison.
It stated: "Succession without writers is just The Apprentice. And look how that worked out."
Yikes.
Well, you heard them, Hollywood.
Get this sorted so fans don't have the season four finale spoiled, as showrunner Jesse Armstrong has already told The New Yorker it's a good one.
He discussed wrapping up the show at season four, revealing he 'never thought this could go on forever'.
"The end has always been kind of present in my mind," he said.
"From Season 2, I’ve been trying to think: Is it the next one, or the one after that, or is it the one after that?"
He explained that after a meeting with his writing team in December 2021 it was agreed that number four is the one to go out on.
They thought about all the different ways they could end it (more but shorter seasons, loads more seasons and have the storyline morph into something completely different etc), and 'going out sort of strong' came up as the biggest priority.
But interestingly, Armstrong went into writing the final season not thinking this was the end in order to keep as many possibilities for the storyline to flourish.
He explained that the cast have been told this will probably be it and to get ready for one hell of an ending.
Anyway, the joke-threats to ruin Succession - or maybe just flat-out threats, we're not really sure - are the latest blow from Writers Guild of America members.
On Tuesday, US talk shows fell silent as Hollywood shut down for the writers' strike.
Thousands of screenwriters are staging a mass walk-out, as major studios and the Writers Guild of America failed to come to an agreement over pay.
It’s the first strike of its kind in 15 years, with The Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Tonight Show among those being affected by the industrial action.