Rejoice! The Writers Strike Officially Ends Tonight
It's finally over. After 148 days, the Writers Guild of America has officially announced that the strike that has brought Hollywood to a halt for months is ending. After news broke earlier this week that the WGA had finally reached a tentative deal with the studios and streaming services over a new contract, the organization has announced via a press release that they have voted to end the strike. That will go into effect at 12:01 am PT on Wednesday, September 27.
As of this writing, tomorrow the writers can finally get pencils to paper once again. The WGA announced that it has formally reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on a new three-year deal. Both wings of the WGA will vote to ratify the contract in October. Eligible members will be able to vote to ratify the deal from October 2 to October 9. The WGA boasted in a press release that they made "gains and protections for members in every sector of the business."
The WGAW (Writers Guild of America West) Board and WGAE (Writers Guild of America East) Council all voted unanimously to recommend the agreement. That bodes well in terms of getting the wider membership to ratify the contract early next month. In short, the writer's strike is over. Now, though, attention will turn to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and ending that strike so that work on movies and TV across Hollywood can truly continue.
What happens now?
Writers can now return to pitching, selling scripts, working on pre-existing projects, promoting projects, and all other activities that had been halted for nearly five months. This is welcome news for Hollywood studios who are eager to get new shows and movies back on track that are in the hopper for 2024. But truly getting back to work means getting a deal done with SAG as well. The AMPTP has not currently set dates for those negotiations, but they should be happening very soon.
SAG has been on strike for weeks on end as well, largely for the same reasons that the WGA had been. Studios have been relying more on streaming, and issues such as residuals, sizes of writer's rooms, and the use of AI were all key issues driving the strikes. Now, with a WGA deal effectively done, that could provide a framework to get a SAG deal done as well. When that does happen, it will assuredly be chaos in terms of scheduling talent across the board to get many projects finished that were forced to stop production due to the strikes.
Writers seem happy with the deal in the early going, and details of the terms will be broken down more thoroughly in the coming days. For now, writers are celebrating. "Holy f*****g s*** this is a good deal," writer BenDavid Grabinski said on Twitter. Meanwhile, screenwriting duo Mark Swift and Damian Shannon also took to Twitter to share their thoughts, saying the following:
"Speaking as feature writers who have been in this for 25 years, who remember what it was like THEN and NOW, this deal is great for feature writers, esp newer ones. Guaranteed second step, accelerated payment, increased residuals... these are huge wins that will sustain careers."
We'll break down the specifics of the deal and keep you posted with the developing wrap up of the strikes as the week goes on. Stay tuned.