The “Black Phone” author reveals WGA coverage drives his annual scripting habit — and saved his family during a cancer crisis

Joe Hill Writes One Screenplay a Year — and Health Insurance Is Why

Joe Hill is one of the most consistently productive horror writers working today. The author of “Heart-Shaped Box,” “NOS4A2,” “The Fireman,” and “King Sorrow” has also quietly maintained a parallel career as a working screenwriter, producing one script per year for over a decade. In a candid conversation with Mashable, Hill explained the motivation behind that annual discipline with a frankness that surprised many readers: he does it to preserve his family’s healthcare coverage through the Writers Guild of America.

The WGA Coverage Threshold

Membership in the WGA comes with access to a health insurance plan widely considered one of the best available to creative workers in the United States. But that coverage is not automatic or permanent. Guild members must meet annual writing credit minimums — earning a sufficient number of “units” through paid script work — to remain eligible. Miss the threshold in a given year, and coverage lapses. Hill told Mashable plainly that he writes “a screenplay every single year” specifically to meet that requirement. “It’s so important to have access to that healthcare insurance,” he said. The stakes became concrete for his family in 2024, when his wife received a cancer diagnosis. She required surgery during her treatment — precisely the kind of catastrophic, expensive medical event that the WGA plan is designed to cover. The experience underscored just how precarious the American healthcare system remains even for successful, well-established professional writers.

A Collaboration Born From Necessity

When Hill realized he was approaching a coverage gap, he reached out to filmmaker Scott Derrickson, whose adaptation of Hill’s short story “The Black Phone” became a hit horror film in 2022. The pair have an established creative relationship, and Hill trusted Derrickson with both the problem and a potential solution. He sent Derrickson an unpublished novella he had written along with a pitch for how to adapt it. Derrickson’s response was immediate. “He treated it like we were talking about his family healthcare. He’s like, ‘We’re booking you a gig,'” Hill recalled. The resulting project has been set up at Screen Gems, the Sony Pictures specialty label that has a track record with genre material. Details of the novella and its story remain under wraps, but Hill has indicated the screenplay adaptation is currently in revision and is due to be published as a book at some later date. “Right now I’m revising a screenplay that I was paid for for 2025. The script I’m working on now is an adaptation of an unpublished novella that I’d written that will be published eventually,” Hill said.

The Structural Problem Behind the Story

Hill’s situation is not unusual. The WGA health plan requires ongoing qualifying work, and many guild-eligible writers — particularly those whose careers span books, comics, and film without being exclusively attached to studio projects — can find themselves at risk of losing coverage in lean years or during career transitions. The plan itself is administered separately from the guild’s contract negotiations and is tied to employment thresholds that reflect a model of continuous studio employment that does not match how many writers actually work. The 2023 WGA strike, which lasted 148 days, was in part a response to structural changes in the industry that have made it harder for writers to accumulate the credits needed to qualify for benefits. The shift to shorter streaming seasons, the reduction of writers’ rooms, and the contraction of overall script development have all made the threshold harder to meet for mid-level and working writers. Hill is unusually fortunate in having the flexibility, the reputation, and the directorial relationships to manufacture a qualifying script credit when he needs one. Many WGA members do not have that option.

Horror, Healthcare, and the Writer’s Life

Hill has published six novels, multiple short story collections, and extensive comic work, and maintains an unusually public relationship with his readership through newsletters and social media. His disclosure about the healthcare dynamic resonated widely with working writers who recognized the anxiety behind it. For more on how WGA health benefits are structured and what writers must earn to qualify, the guild publishes detailed plan documentation at the WGA Plans website. The broader debate over healthcare access for freelance and gig-economy creative workers is tracked by organizations including the Freelancers Union. For context on the 2023 WGA strike and its impact on writer benefits, the WGA West maintains a historical record of negotiations and outcomes. Hill’s next novel, “Hunger,” is scheduled for publication in October 2026. His screenplay work continues alongside it, driven not only by creative ambition but by the practical logic of keeping his family covered.