Seth Rogen sees right through streaming CEOs' secrecy

As he gears up for the May 24 debut of his new Apple TV+ series Platonic, Seth Rogen still has the ongoing writers’ strike on his mind: after all, his concerns as a creator fall directly in line with those fueling the strike. At Platonic’s series premiere on Wednesday night, Rogen told Variety that one of his biggest worries is the clandestine nature of streaming residuals, which leaves creators and writers with little to no sense of the success metrics their work is being judged upon.

“I’m personally distressed by not having any sense of how successful these shows and movies we make for streaming services are,” Rogen says. “The secretiveness only makes me think that they’re making way more money off of all of us than they want to share with anybody. These executives are making insane salaries that you would only make if you are running an incredibly profitable business.”

The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) has officially been on strike since Tuesday, May 2, after contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) didn’t materialize a deal by a May 1 deadline. The WGA’s Pattern of Demands, a list of contract objectives the Guild approved back on March 7 with 98.4% of the member vote, highlight a variety of streaming-era changes that have knee-capped writers’ stability, including truncated mini-rooms and unstandardized streaming residuals.

On the bright side, Rogen points out, unions like the WGA are vital resources for writers struggling against consolidated power at the top, and the current strike indicates just how much can be accomplished when workers unite and power through together.

“Thank God for these labor unions and their ability to force these gigantic corporations who banded together to drive down the wages of workers to actually do something every once in a while and act fairly and equitably,” Rogen concludes.