Screenwriters in Toronto and Montreal took to the streets Wednesday to show solidarity with members of the Writers Guild of America, who are in the fourth week of a strike.

Canadian TV and film writers joined writers in Paris, London, Berlin and other entertainment centres around the world in a show of support for their U.S. colleagues.

A member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain shows his support for striking Hollywood screenwriters.
(Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press)

"As Canadian writers, what happens in the U.S. desperately affects us," said Denis McGrath, a Canadian screenwriter picketing outside Toronto's Sony Centre.

"We already make a lot less money than American writers do, and we still have it better than writers in other countries," he said.

"So all around the world today, in six, seven cities around the world, different members of their national writers guilds are marching in solidarity with the WGA for their deal on internet rights."

In Montreal, writers picketed outside the headquarters of Société des auteurs de radio, télévision et cinéma (SARTEC).

The second day of renewed contract talks between striking WGA movie and television writers and Hollywood producers ended Tuesday without a deal.

Both sides agreed to reconvene Wednesday morning in Los Angeles for further negotiations.

The divisive issue in the dispute has been compensation for rebroadcast of work over the internet, pay TV and cellphones.

The WGA insists writers must be compensated for rebroadcast of their work, while the studios maintain they should not be locked into a payment formula because the internet is an untried medium.

"I'm really hopeful that they'll reach some sort of solution, because it affects every writer who writes for television, who writes for new media, and film,” said Anne Marie Perrotta, national forum delegate with the Writers Guild of Canada, who was picketing in Montreal.

“We're fighting for the screenwriters' future," she said.

Representatives of the Alliance of Canadian Television, Film and Radio Artists, the Writers' Union of Canada, the Directors Guild of Canada, the Canadian Media Guild and the Montreal Film Group were also among those participating in the day of solidarity.

"The internet is the future of the entertainment industry," said Rebecca Schechter, president of the Writers Guild of Canada, in an interview with CBC News in Toronto.

"Writers deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do everywhere in the world."

U.S. writers get worldwide support

There were also events in Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

In Berlin, a protest drew about 30 script writers and actors to the famed Brandenburg Gate.

In Paris, a few dozen writers marched from the Opera Garnier to the Trocadero Plaza across from the Eiffel Tower, carrying signs that said "Our creative work is under threat."

The issue is "how you pay creative artists in the digital world," said British writer Mark Burton, who was among several dozen writers who rallied in front of the London headquarters of Britain's main union federation.

"Producers see an opportunity to seize more territory for themselves," said Burton, also a WGA member and whose credits include Madagascar and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Playwright David Edgar, president of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, added that by not paying a writer for use of his or her work on the internet, producers are reducing the writer's relationship to that of "the widget maker's relationship to the widget once it is made — that is, none at all."

With files from the Associated Press