Writers from across Canada and countries including Australia, Ireland and the U.K. say they will stage demonstrations on Nov. 28 in a show of solidarity with the Writers Guild of America — just as scripts run out and TV shows shut down in B.C.

‘Their fight is our fight,’ said Rebecca Schechter, president of the Writers Guild of Canada, at a meeting of the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds in Montreal. ‘Screenwriters around the world are entitled to receive their fair share of revenues from the Internet, and that is what our American colleagues are fighting for.’ The IAWG is an umbrella organization of unions representing some 21,000 scribes across the globe, which convened in Montreal this week for its annual meeting.

Writers will demonstrate in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, English and French Canada, the U.K., Mexico and France in a show of sympathy with the WGA, now 12 days into its strike in the U.S.

A spokesperson for the WGC says it is not yet known where the Canadian demonstrations will take place, but noted ‘this is not a picket’ and has nothing to do with Canadian producers.

The move comes as U.S. series have begun to run out of scripts, reportedly shutting down a number of shoots ahead of schedule in B.C. NBC’s Bionic Woman and Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica have both gone dark, according to a report in The Globe and Mail. Bionic Woman was supposed to shoot into December, while BSG was due to run until March.

The CW’s Aliens in America is expected to shut down at the end of the month, according to a recent message from IATSE Local 669 to its members. The technicians union says Supernatural will shut down on Dec. 5, followed by ABC’s Men in Trees and The CW’s Smallville in January.

The province is also hosting season one of Reaper, which is close to the end of its first season, and Flash Gordon. A typical series employs 100 to 200 or more people.

‘We can expect things to begin tailing off almost immediately after Christmas. There will be no pilot season in February,’ writes IATSE’s Don Ramsden. ‘In the new year we should start pandering to producers who have European connections. We need to get reconnected to coproductions with treaty countries that pay crew in pounds or euros.’

B.C. has recently hosted far more U.S. series than Toronto or Montreal, making it more vulnerable to the effects of the strike as it eats into Hollywood’s supply of dramas and comedies. The WGA walkout is not expected to have the same impact on movies or MOWs that are already underway, given that scripts for projects such as The Watchmen and The Day The Earth Stood Still are already written, and do not get the same day-to-day maintenance as TV shows.

‘We don’t need to worry about that,’ said a spokesperson for Day the Earth Stood Still, which is set to start shooting early next month. ‘Our script is locked in and we’re doing no revisions.’