Judd Apatow. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood's king of comedy isn't joking when he forecasts a long, brutal winter ahead because of the writers strike.

Nor is Judd Apatow shy about who is to blame for a work stoppage that's already crippled the television industry and wreaked havoc among film productions.

"I think the studios are behaving horribly ... They're behaving like they own a meat-packing plant to get a better bottom line," the producer of Knocked Up and Superbad tells Sun Media.

At issue for striking scribes are residual payments. They want a bigger share of revenue generated by DVD sales and the Internet.

"A lot of it is lack of creativity and discipline on how (the studios) run their business and then at the end of the day saying, 'Let's take it away from the writers. Let's find a way to go to the bottom of the ladder and squeeze it out of them,' " says Apatow.

"At this point (the studios) want a strike and they want it to last a long time. This should have been over a long time ago."

Although last week there was speculation a resolution was in the offing, that optimism has dimmed even as talks continue between the Writer's Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Some believe if a deal isn't struck by Christmas, the dispute could drag on into March. The previous writers strike in 1988 lasted 22 weeks and cost the industry more than $500 million.

Pirates of the Caribbean mogul Jerry Bruckheimer says the results will be disastrous for industry workers.

"People are going to lose their houses. It's sad," says Bruckheimer, who produces such TV series as the CSI franchise, Cold Case and Without A Trace.

"All our shows have been shut down."

Says Apatow, "A lot of movies aren't going to get made and a lot of movies are going to be made badly ... I don't know how long the writers will have a stomach for it, but I know a lot of writers will have the stomach for it for a very long time."

Meanwhile, in anticipation of an actors walkout in June, Hollywood players continue to line up work.

With his next film scuttled because of the writers strike, Johnny Depp, for example, has signed to play Depression-era gangster John Dillinger in a drama for Heat director Michael Mann.