The Death of “Fuck You Money” and the Rise of the Digital White Walkers

A female showrunner, and a brilliant, razor-sharp, maddeningly talented, and scarily perceptive one, sent me something today.

“They’re saying what you’ve been saying, and saying since we stood outside Disney Studios in 2007-08.”

Back then, the WGA claimed it was striking for DVD residuals, just as David Cook’s Blockbuster gasped its last breaths, collapsing under the weight of a changing world.

While Blockbuster's blue-and-yellow temples were emptying out, a quiet invasion was already underway—one delivered not by a fleet of armored trucks but by an army of red-and-black envelopes slipping through America’s mailboxes.

Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph’s Netflix was revolutionizing Hollywood.

Few saw it coming other than another madly talented creative and then Show runner of Criminal Minds, Edward Bernero, he saw it as I saw it.

But no one listened, not just the studios, not just the suits, not the WGA. We both sensed something far worse on the horizon and yet was already in the palm of our hands.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus had precursor tech that meant our entire lives would be monitored, tracked, recorded, sold, and ultimately owned. The last vestiges of creative control were slipping through our fingers.

What I didn’t realize was that Hollywood’s entire ecosystem, the marketing, the control, the old studio empire, was already being annexed by a handful of white tech engineers in Northern California.

One of them? A kid from South Africa, dreaming of Mars, who understood that if you owned the space just above the Karman Line, you controlled the world's media. All he needed was a rocket and a constellation of satellites.

Elon Musk owns two-thirds of all commercial satellites in orbit.

FLASHBACK: 2005

I met Elon Musk in his rented home in Santa Monica, days after he’d launched Falcon 6. He proudly opened his MacBook, and there it was—Falcon 6 had circumnavigated the Earth twice.

It had taken NASA 44 attempts to achieve the same milestone.

He knew exactly where this was heading. What it all meant.

Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, the greed train was running at full speed, hurtling toward a cliff. The people in charge were too enamored with their own brilliance, too comfortable in their own gilded cages, to notice. But Elon? He saw the future. His only real fear back then?

“What happens when someone, or something, smarter than me comes along?”

That “something” has arrived. That something is AI.

Hollywood Before the Fall

Before 2013, movie writers looked down on TV writers like we were a lesser species. If a movie actor took a TV role, their agents, perched in ivory towers built by their clients, considered it a career death sentence.

But then, word got out, they started hearing about TV money. They heard like me, John Wells made over $300 million from ER, which transformed George Clooney into one of the last true movie stars. Clooney, ever the showman, declared:

“

The world needs Clark Gable. And I’m it.”

With that, the tide began to turn.

Big Tech was watching.

They saw the gold rush coming.

And they knew how to steal it.

The Illusion of Power

Before I came to LA, I had lived under the UK’s free healthcare system, where a toothache was as terrifying as financial ruin. Here in Hollywood, at least, there was protection. Here, there was power.

For a while at least. 

The early 2000s were the Golden Age of Showrunners.

If you were a showrunner, you weren’t just another cog in the machine.

You were the machine.

You were an F1 driver with your own pit crew—agents, managers, lawyers, assistants. Your parking space had your name on it. Your golf cart waited outside to zip you across the lot to the commissary, where you dined like a king.

It was your vision that powered the industry.

A Fortress Guarded by Gatekeepers

When I arrived in LA in 2002, British writers weren’t in the system.

Actors? Yes. Directors? Sure. Writers? No.

It was a fortress, fiercely guarded by American writers, and diversity didn’t exist unless the system controlled it. Especially not in the grip department. There was a saying in Hollywood about rigging—a phrase so casually dropped that it stopped me cold. I won’t repeat it here.

But as a white South Londoner who grew up in a wildly diverse community, hearing that kind of racism in the so-called liberal Mecca of Hollywood was a gut punch.

And yet, there was another phrase that carried its own gravity:

“This is where you earn ‘Fuck You Money.’”

That was the dream. That was the prize. And it worked.

Until it didn’t.

The 2008 Strike: The Illusion of Victory

The writers won! Or at least, that’s what we were told.

To this day, I still don’t know what the fuck we actually won, but for a while, it kept us making our “Fuck You Money”and living absurd Hollywood Hills lives. At that point, I was a supervising producer on Criminal Minds—a show built by the room, not just the credited writer.

The real architect? Ed Bernero and his writers room where my favorite saying is always - WHAT IF? 

But while we were busy making hit television, something bigger than all of us was shifting.

The Digital Iceberg

By 2013, it was too late. Apple’s iPhone. Netflix’s House of Cards.

Amazon’s Prime Video. The Trojan Horse was already inside the gates. They were renting houses on the beach. If we didn’t act fast, writers’ rooms like ours would vanish. No more "Fuck You Money".

No more golden age. But no one listened.

Instead, Beau Willimon got his House of Cards deal—praised by the WGA as a masterstroke. But what was it really? I believe, It was the moment we fucked ourselves. Netflix bought everything all rights, in perpetuity.

Beau only got paid for the work he did on the show. That was it.

No back-end. No participation. No ownership.

It was the blue print, the Citadel, it was a collective yard sale and the beginning of the end.

Fucking. Insane.

And while we patted ourselves on the back, the Digital White Walkers had finished building their empire. They weren’t just at the gates.

They were already inside.

The Fall of Hollywood

Now?

Look around. The industry we built? Gone.

The system that made showrunners kings? Dust.

The unions that were supposed to protect us—WGA, DGA, SAG?

Too blind to see the iceberg before we hit it.

Now, Hollywood isn’t Hollywood anymore.

It’s content. It’s algorithms. It’s an endless churn of AI-generated mediocrity, owned by corporations that don’t give a fuck about storytelling. And the people who were once the vanguard?

We built the House of Cards. And then? We burned it to the ground. 

How’s that for a legacy! Here you go kids. 

Can they win it back. Of course they can. Problem is they need to be smarter than Ai. How do they do that. 

By being human and caring and protecting their story because we sure as shit fucked up ours. 

🔗