The writers have reached a tentative agreement to end the strike
The Agreement between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after the First Day of the WGA-AMPTP Session
Writers will have to vote to approve the deal after details of the agreement are publicly known, according to the leadership of the guild. The guild said that it might end the strike after Tuesday, when the contract is finalized and sent to the members for a vote. The guild is suspending picketing immediately.
The negotiating committee of the Writers Guild of America was proud to say that the agreement was an exceptional deal with meaningful gains and protections for writers.
The agreement was finalized over several nights of bargaining between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers through the middle and end of the past week.
They have had to adjust their financial projections because of the strikes. Discovery lowered its expectations for earnings by about $300 to $500 million after it estimated an extra 1.5 billion in free cash flow.
The Disney CEO, Warner Bros. CEO, Discovery CEO and others were at the bargaining table last week. It was a highly unusual move, signaling studios’ eagerness to return to work; the stoppage has already caused them to delay premieres of many films and series.
The screenwriters want higher pay and more residuals when their work is re-run on streaming services, but the other side doesn’t want it. They requested a residual formula based on the number of views the show gets on the streamers.
Executives were worried about their profits, and pointed out that they had laid off employees over the last few years. Streamers like Netflix and Amazon have also been reluctant to release data on their viewership.
Writers complained about the new streaming model and asked for guaranteed staffing levels. They were concerned about the use of mini rooms, in which individual writers are hired to submit their work on spec, with no guarantees. The elimination of the writer’s room on the TV series deprives younger writers of the chance to be showrunners and harms continuity needed for consistent storylines and characters, according to the WGA.
The new proposal from the AMPTP still needs to be made public, but it gives the show creators the option to hire at least two writers for each show.
The studios have also reportedly agreed to some demands to protect writer’s work from using artificial intelligence in the writing process. The AMPTP did not agree with the idea of banning written material produced by generative artificial intelligence software.
73 days has passed since the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the actors union talked about bargains for the studios. That will probably soon change given the high stakes of salvaging the 2024 theatrical box office, which will be in considerable jeopardy should Hollywood not be able to restart production within the next month. The studio alliance and the guild did not respond to questions on Monday.
The dual strikes by the writers and the actors — the first time that has happened since 1960 — have effectively shut down TV and film production for months. The impact of the scandal has been significant both inside and outside the industry. The Governor said that California’s economy lost more than $5 billion.
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