How The 2007-08 Writers Strike Led To The Creation Of Suits
The year 2023 has been filled with unlikely movie and TV success stories. "Barbenheimer" delivered two of the biggest movies of the year, while Marvel and superhero films gave us box office disappointments. On the TV front, "The Last of Us" delivered one of the best live-action adaptations of a video game ever, and the live-action "One Piece" beat the odds to become an acclaimed hit.
Then there's "Suits." The 12-year-old show started streaming on Netflix in June and has gathered over 3 billion "watch minutes" per week over the course of the summer — though we know how reliable streaming ratings can be. Whether it's the large number of episodes that has audiences enthralled, or the relatable characters you can follow for hundreds of hours (as show creator Aaron Korsh theorized), it cannot be denied that the masses have "Suits" fever. There's a new show set in the "Suits" universe in the works, and Korsh is even considering the possibility of a reboot of the main series (under one condition).
While "Suits" took over Netflix in the middle of this year's writers' strike, its origin can be traced to the previous writer' strike of 2007-2008. As Korsh once told Deadline, he had worked as a writer's assistant for eight years. When he finally got a job as a staff writer on the show "Notes From the Underbelly," it got canceled due to the strike. But the setback ended up being a blessing for Korsh. Worried about his future as a writer, he wrote a script. Initially, it was meant to be a half-hour "Entourage" like show "based on my life as an investment banker in New York," but it "came out as an hour."
Union strong
As Korsh told it, he wrote the script just to try and get a job. "I never wanted to create my own show; I just wanted to land on someone else's show."
The showrunner was clear on the serendipitous connection between "Suits" and the writers' strike. Korsh talked to The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year to explain how "Suits" benefitted from the results of the 2007-2008 strike when it came to residuals. That show generated residuals from cable, but also from international broadcast and even streaming (since "Suits" was licensed to streaming platforms rather than made by them). A show made for streaming today would generate nowhere near the amount of residual money "Suits" made years ago, which was a big reason why the WGA went on strike earlier this year.
Thankfully, the WGA did get a new deal, one that addressed most of their concerns and got writers residuals for streaming titles. A show like "Suits" would never get as popular if it had gotten made for streaming today as it was when made for cable, because shows simply don't get 134 episodes nowadays. At least it would compensate writers fairly if it did get made for streaming, however. And that's all thanks to unions.