Hollywood’s writers’ strike was declared over on Tuesday after nearly five months when board members from their union approved a contract agreement with studios, bringing the industry at least partly back from a historic halt in production.
The governing boards of the eastern and western branches of the Writers Guild of America and their joint negotiating committee all voted to accept the deal, two days after the tentative agreement was reached with a coalition of Hollywood’s biggest studios, streaming services and production companies.
After the vote they said that the strike would be over and writers would be free to start on scripts at 12:01am yesterday.
Photo: AFP
Late-night talk shows — the first to go dark when writers walked out on May 2 — are likely the first shows to resume.
Scripted shows would take longer to return, with actors still on strike and no negotiations yet on the horizon.
The writers still have to vote to ratify the contract themselves early next month, but lifting the strike would allow them to work during that process, the guild told members in an e-mail.
After Tuesday’s board votes, the contracts were released for the first time to the writers, who had not yet been given any details on the deal, which their leaders called “exceptional.”
The three-year agreement includes significant wins in the main areas writers had fought for — compensation, length of employment, size of staffs and control of artificial intelligence (AI) — matching or nearly equaling what they had sought at the outset of the strike.
The union had sought minimum increases in pay and future residual earnings from shows of between 5 and 6 percent, depending on the position of the writer. The studios had wanted between 2 and 4 percent.
The compromise deal was a raise of between 3.5 and 5 percent.
The guild also negotiated new residual payments based on the popularity of streaming shows, where writers would get bonuses for being a part of the most popular shows on Netflix, Max and other services, a proposal studios initially rejected.
Many writers on picket lines had complained that they were not properly paid for helping create heavily watched properties.
The writers also got the requirement they sought that shows intended to run at least 13 episodes would have at least six writers on staff, with the numbers shifting based on the number of episodes.
They did not get their desire for guaranteed staffs of six on shows that had not yet been ordered to series, settling instead for a guaranteed three.
Writers also got a guarantee that staff on shows in initial development would be employed for at least 10 weeks and that staff on shows that go to air would be employed for three weeks per episode.
On AI, the writers got the regulation and control of the emerging technology they had sought. Under the contract, raw, AI-generated storylines would not be regarded as “literary material” — a term in their contracts for scripts and other story forms that a screenwriter produces.
This means they would not be competing with computers for screen credits. Nor would AI-generated stories be considered “source” material, their contractual language for the novels, video games or other works that writers might adapt into scripts.
Writers have the right under the deal to use AI in their process if the company they are working for agrees and other conditions are met, but companies cannot require a writer to use AI.
Still-striking members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists returned to the picket lines earlier on Tuesday for the first time since the writers struck their tentative deal, and they were animated by a new spirit of optimism.
“For a hot second, I really thought that this was going to go on until next year,” said Marissa Cuevas, an actor who has appeared on the TV series Kung Fu and The Big Bang Theory. “Knowing that at least one of us has gotten a good deal gives a lot of hope that we will also get a good deal.”
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