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Reuters

Hollywood’s writers union said it reached a preliminary labour agreement with major studios on Sunday, a deal expected to end one of two strikes that have halted most film and television production and cost the California economy billions.
The three-year contract still must be approved by leadership of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) as well union members, before it can take effect.
The WGA, which represents 11,500 film and television writers, described the deal as “exceptional” with “meaningful gains and protections for writers”.
“This was made possible by the enduring solidarity of WGA members and extraordinary support of our union siblings who joined us on the picket lines for over 146 days,” the negotiating committee said in a statement Sunday.

The WGA settlement, while a milestone, will not return Hollywood to work. The SAG-AFTRA actors’ union remains on strike.
Writers walked off the job on May 2 after negotiations reached an impasse over compensation, minimum staffing of writers’ rooms, the use of artificial intelligence and residuals that reward writers for popular streaming shows, among other issues.
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We stuck it out,” WGA liaison Caroline Renard said Sunday. “This is a union industry, and it’s about the people that make the actual product that makes these company billions of dollars.”
One writer posted an image on social media of a picket sign that read simply: “The End”.
The only comment from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade group representing Walt Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros Discovery and other major studios, came in a brief statement with the union.
“The WGA and AMPTP have reached a tentative agreement,” the statement said.
The proposed contract is still preliminary. The WGA’s negotiating committee said it would share details only after it receives final contract language.
After that, the negotiators will vote on whether to recommend the deal to leadership, which must then decide if they will present it to members for a vote.
Hollywood’s dual strikes had shut down production of films and TV series and sent late-night talk shows into re-runs. Efforts to restart daytime talk shows without writers, such as The Drew Barrymore Show, collapsed this month, in the face of criticism from striking writers and actors.
At picket lines, protests took on the rhetoric of class warfare. Writers assailed media executives’ compensation and said working conditions had made it hard for them to earn a middle-class living.

Executives at times fanned tensions. Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, fresh off a contract extension that offered an annual bonus of five times his base salary, criticised striking writers and actors as “just not realistic” in their demands.
Iger subsequently struck a conciliatory note, citing his “deep respect” for creative professionals.
The work stoppages took a toll on camera operators, carpenters, production assistants and other crew members, as well as the caterers, florists, costume suppliers and other small businesses that support film and television production.
The economic cost is expected to total at least US$5 billion in California and the other US production hubs of New Mexico, Georgia and New York, according to an estimate from Milken Institute economist Kevin Klowden.
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Four top industry executives – Iger, Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and NBCUniversal Studio Group Chair Donna Langley – joined negotiations this week, helping to break the months-long impasse.
As with past writers’ strikes, this job action responds to Hollywood capitalising on a new form of distribution – and writers seek to participate in the new-found revenue.
The 100-day strike in 2007-08 focused, in part, on extending guild protections to “new media”, including films and TV downloads as well as content delivered via ad-supported internet services.
This time around, a central issue is residual payments for streaming services, which writers said represented a fraction of the compensation they would receive for a broadcast television show.
Writers also sought limits on AI’s role in the creative process. Some feared that studio executives would hand a writer an AI-generated script to revise, and pay the writer at a lower rate to rewrite or polish it. Others expressed concerns about intellectual property theft if existing scripts are used to train artificial intelligence.
Even as studio executives celebrated the end of the longest-running writers’ strike since 1988, it is only half the labour battle. The studios must still find a way to get actors back to work.
SAG-AFTRA, representing 160,000 film and television actors, stunt performers, voice-over artists and other media professionals, walked off the job in July, the first time in 63 years that Hollywood faced a strike by two unions at the same time.
In a statement late Sunday, SAG-AFTRA urged studio CEOs and their negotiators “to return to the table and make the fair deal that our members deserve and demand”.
At issue are questions of minimum wages for performers, protections against the use of artificial intelligence replacing human performances and compensation that reflects the value actors bring to the streaming services.


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Hollywood

Hollywood writers reach tentative deal with studios to end strike

Hollywood’s dual strikes had shut down production of movies and TV series and sent late-night talk shows into re-runs. File photo: Shutterstock

Striking writers in front of Paramount Pictures studio in Los Angeles. File photo: AP

Disney CEO Bob Iger, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Photo: AP

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Father-daughter duo Ethan Hawke and Maya Hawke, who he “loved” in Stranger Things. Photo: @maya_hawke/Instagram

Hollywood star Ethan Hawke and his daughter, Maya Hawke, who’s also in showbiz. Photo: @ethanhawke/Instagram

Father-daughter duo Ethan Hawke and Maya Hawke starred in historical drama series The Good Lord Bird together. Photo: @maya_hawke/Instagram

Cast member Ethan Hawke attends a premiere for the television series Moon Knight in Los Angeles, California, in March 2022. Photo: Reuters

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A still from “Black Knight”, a South Korean sci-fi series on Netflix. Digital twins of the main cast members were scanned for use in action scenes, but on the whole AI does not currently threaten the livelihoods of Korean actors. Photo: Netflix

Brian Cox (right) as Logan Roy in a still from HBO’s “Succession”. A-list Korean actors are thought to be earning more than US$400,000 per episode in the streaming era, on par with the cast of “Succession”. Photo: HBO Go

A still from “Physical 100”. Photo: Netflix

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Emmy Award statues. Television’s equivalent of the Oscars will be postponed until January over Hollywood strikes. Photo: TNS

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Jeremy Strong, left, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin in HBO’s Succession. Photo: HBO/TNS

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Strike revolved around streaming-related pay, impact of artificial intelligence in the creative process
Three-year contract must be approved by Writers Guild of America leadership, members


Apparent breakthrough will raise hopes that striking actors can also reach terms with studios to end a months-long impasse that has seen US film and TV production largely halted.


Hollywood writers reach tentative deal with studios to end strike

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Strike revolved around streaming-related pay, impact of artificial intelligence in the creative process Three-year contract must be approved by Writers Guild of America leadership, members

Strike revolved around streaming-related pay, impact of artificial intelligence in the creative process

Three-year contract must be approved by Writers Guild of America leadership, members