Universal Pictures cut back some trees in a spot where striking screenwriters had congregated to have coverage from sunlight. .“Quick shoutout to the good people at @UniversalPics for trimming the trees that gave our picket line shade right before a 90+ degree week,” said American comedian Chris Stephens in a tweet. .Stephens included a photo of the trees having few branches and leaves. .American screenwriter Etta Devine encouraged people to reach out to the City of Los Angeles about the trimmed trees. .“If you are upset these Ficus were pruned out of season to punish strikers, call the city!” said Devine. .American screenwriter Margaret Dunlap said people are “telling me the studio damaged something that had grown over many years and which they benefited from in order to inflict pain on others.” .“Yeah, that checks out.” .A Universal Pictures spokesperson said on Tuesday the tree work is an annual ritual at this time of year. .“We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Boulevard has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention,” said the spokesperson..“In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season.”.The Writers Guild of America (WGA), representing 11,500 screenwriters, went on strike in May amid an ongoing dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). .This strike is the largest interruption to American television and film production since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and is the largest labour stoppage the WGA has performed since 2008. .One of the main focus points in the labor dispute is compensation from streaming media, as the WGA claims AMPTP's share has cut much of the writers' average incomes compared to one decade ago. Writers want artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT to be used as a tool which can help with research or facilitate script ideas and not as one to replace them.
