In a hilarious turn of events, writers disrupted David Zaslav’s time at billionaire summer camp by requesting the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO pay up for their lost wages via Venmo. While the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) are striking for better pay and working conditions, many Hollywood CEOs and studio executives jetted off to the Sun Valley Conference between July 11 and July 14. Dubbed the “summer camp for billionaires,” individuals like Disney’s Bob Iger, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, and Zaslav were spotted attending and chilling at the luxurious retreat as if the SAG-AFTRA strike hadn’t just been announced alongside the ongoing WGA strike.
All 11,500 writers represented by the WGA have been on strike since May 2, 2023. The writers are looking for better working conditions and pay, as well as protections against artificial intelligence (A.I.) replacing their labor. While some may automatically think that writers in Hollywood are rich, many are actually struggling to pay their rent and survive on the wages they’re being paid. For entry-level positions, the salary is around $44,363 per year, while $65,000 is the average salary for writers in the industry. This doesn’t go very far for those living in California, where cities like Los Angeles come with some of the highest costs of living in the United States.
Additionally, writers are increasingly finding their residuals slashed or abruptly stopped due to streaming and streaming library purges. With the rise of writing rooms, many writers are also having their work taken and used while they are barred from production and left without any long-term employment. Needless to say, a lot of writers are owed wages that studios are now denying them with tactics like streaming and writers’ rooms. Fortunately, the writers won a small victory when they were able to interrupt Zaslav’s time at camp with a flurry of Venmo requests.
Writers take to Venmo to request David Zaslav pay up
On July 13, journalist Sean Morrow brought attention to the fact that David Zaslav’s Venmo is public. Of course, the CEO has not confirmed or denied that was his account, but it did seem legit. On public Venmo accounts, users can see every payment that someone sent or received, and several screenshots have circulated showing Zaslav sending money to other wealthy individuals, like Cheryl Hines, or receiving money from CBS producer David Theodosopoulos.
It didn’t take long for internet users to quickly realize that Zaslav’s public account meant that they could send him payment requests. Writers recognized an opportunity to demand that Zaslav pay them for lost wages. What transpired next was “Grade A trolling,” as journalists and writers sent requests to Zaslav. Some demanded payment for the money lost in residuals when Max removed their work permanently from the streamer, while others requested money for “new picket line walking shoes.” The GQ writer who had his scathing article about Zaslav taken down even sent a request for the CEO to pay up on that loss.
What was even more hilarious is that Zaslav took the time to decline these requests. Now, we don’t know if it was him or if someone was running his account for him. However, if it was him, it doesn’t get any more cringy than a billionaire at a billionaire camp going out of his way to say “no” to all his employees asking for payment. It’s comforting though, to know he may have personally seen all the requests, including the ones asking him to pay “a**hole tax.”
Declining the requests seems to have been a little too much work for Zaslav, and his account has since disappeared from Venmo (or more likely set to private). Writers can rest assured, though, they at least made Zaslav sweat a little bit at the billionaire camp with their compensation requests.
(featured image: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
