Hollywood writers and studios have struck a tentative deal. Is the strike ending?
After four months of striking, a deal between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have reached a tentative deal.
The WGA on Sept. 24 issued a notice about the agreement to its members, saying it includes "meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership."
The update came after a weekend of negotiation between the guild and prominent Hollywood studios.
Top executives like Disney's Bob Iger, Netflix's Ted Sarandos, Discovery's David Zaslav and NBCUniversal's Donna Langley attended the negotiations for the first time Sept. 20, NBC News reported. (Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, is a member of the AMPTP.)
Since May 2, the WGA — an alliance of two labor unions representing over 11,000 film, television, news, radio and online writers — has been on strike, demanding higher pay and a stable pay structure, as well as fairer deals and contracts and provisions about artificial intelligence, according to a list of WGA proposals.
The guild, when announcing the strike, called this moment an "existential crisis" for writers.
The effects of the monthslong strike have been felt by thousands in Hollywood, as about 160,000 people in the entertainment industry, including actors, recording artists, radio personalities and other media professionals represented by SAG-AFTRA, announced in July they would also go on strike.
The actors strike is still ongoing. And while an agreement between the writers and studios has been reached, an official contract is not yet in place, the WGA said — therefore, the writers strike is not officially over either.
"To be clear, no one is to return to work until specifically authorized to by the Guild," the WGA said in the Sept. 24 notice.
So why did writers decide to walk off the job in the first place? Here’s what to know about why writers are striking, and what the strike means for upcoming TV show and movie releases.
Why are Hollywood writers striking?
Writers went on strike after six weeks of negotiations failed with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a body that represents major Hollywood studios and production companies like Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount, Sony, Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney.
During the first week of the strike, writers began picketing the headquarters of major studios including Netflix, Amazon, Warner Bros., Universal Studios, and others.
Protestors brandished signs demanding higher wages and targeting studio executives with tongue-in-cheek messages like, “Give up just ONE yacht” and “Pay your writers or we’ll spoil ‘Succession.’”
One of the strike’s key demands is higher compensation.
Median weekly writer-producer pay has declined 23 percent over the last decade when adjusting for inflation, according to a recent WGA report.
“Our wages have been falling in the last few years as the streamers’ profits have been skyrocketing,” writer Amanda Mercedes tells TODAY.com.
Mercedes, 36, who lives in Burbank, California, is a staff writer for the ABC crime procedural “The Rookie: Feds.” She says the rise of streaming services like Netflix have “changed the business model completely,” making it harder for writers to find consistent, well-paying work.
Whereas a successful show could have run for seasons during the cable era, giving writers steady job and learning for years, the binge-able, big-budget shows made for streamers are typically shorter and renewed with less consistency. Writers have to scramble from job to job.
“With traditional TV models, jobs were lasting six months, nine months, a year. I saw a writer the other day that said that her last job was four weeks, and that’s just not sustainable to be able to string together gigs in that way to make a living," Mercedes says.
Streaming also lead to different format of writers' rooms. Mercedes pointed to the rising use of “mini rooms” — scaled-down writers’ rooms that hire fewer writers for shorter periods of time, and often pay less, according to the WGA. In a mini room, a small group of writers typically work with the showrunner to break down the season's plot points and work on scripts, which are finished without them.
“Mini rooms are crushing the ability for writers to string together jobs the way that we used to,” Mercedes says.
There’s a lot at stake for Mercedes, who spoke with TODAY.com just before heading out to join the picket line at the headquarters of Paramount.
Mercedes started her staff writing job last May and joined the WGA in September, just in time to be eligible for health insurance before welcoming a baby this February.
“It’s objectively a terrible time to have just broken in and started a family,” she wrote in a recent Instagram post. “But I will be wearing that baby on the picket line so that I have a shred of hope to stay in this business while raising him.”
Writers are also fighting for higher residual payments, or the payments writers receive when shows they have worked on are re-released, whether as reruns or in syndication.
According to the WGA, half of all writers now work in streaming, which pays fewer residuals for new and pre-existing shows.
Valentina Garza, a producer and writer who has worked on shows including “Wednesday,” “Only Murders in the Building” and “Jane the Virgin,” shared one stark example on Twitter of how low residual payments can be on streaming services.
“In case anyone’s wondering why the WGA is on strike, this is my streaming residual check for two episodes of 'Jane the Virgin,'” she tweeted, sharing a photo of a check made out for three cents. “One for .01 another for .02. I think the streamers can do better.”
In the face of these industry shifts, the union is proposing regulations regarding artificial intelligence, pay structures to make up for the elimination of residuals, preservation of the writers' room, minimum pay for streaming, and guaranteed number of on-the-week jobs for writers, per a WGA document.
The Guild's proposals, according to the WGA, would cost studios $429 million per year. Studios' counterproposals were $86 million.
When will the writers strike end?
While the WGA and AMPTP reached a deal, the guild is still striking until a contract is official, according to the WGA's Sept. 24 notice to its members.
These are the steps that need to be taken before the strike concludes, the WGA said:
When the memorandum of agreement is complete, the guild's negotiating committee will vote on whether to recommend the agreement.
The guild's board and council will then vote on whether to authorize a contract ratification vote by its members.
If that authorization is approved, the board and council will vote to lift its restraining order and decide when to end the strike.
The last time the WGA went on strike in November 2007, the strike lasted until February 2008, when the union reached a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The WGA also launched a strike in 1988 over residuals, spanning 153 days.
The more recent three-month strike disrupted the seasons of many hit shows at the time, including “The Office,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Breaking Bad.” The entertainment landscape shifted during those 100 days as a result, leading to a reality TV boom (for example, NBC launched the “The Celebrity Apprentice” during this time; “Cops” was developed during the writers’ strike of 1988).
In the meantime, several Hollywood stars have spoken out in support of the current strike.
“This is what I would be doing on TV without writers,” Mandy Patinkin wrote in a viral tweet, sharing a video of himself standing in silence.
Rob Lowe, Tina Fey, Fran Drescher, Seth Meyers, Mindy Kaling and other celebrities have also been spotted on picket lines over the past week. Pete Davidson delivered pizza to a strike in Brooklyn.
Mercedes says that while she has no idea whether the current strike will last as long as the previous one, she is confident that she and her colleagues will strike “as long as it takes for us to get the contract that we need.”
“The creativity starts with us,” she added, “and the rest of the industry can’t move forward without the words on the page.”
How is the writers’ strike affecting TV shows and movies?
Some major shows and films have delayed production once the strike began its second week.
Some shows, including the CBS drama “Evil” and the Apple TV+ comedy “Loot,” stopped production after writers formed picket lines at filming locations. In solidarity with the writers, many non-writer crew members reportedly joined the strike, stalling filming.
Other shows are delayed because there are no writers to staff their writers’ rooms.
Writers for ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” were “supposed to be going back into the writers room (on May 3) to start on the third season,” series star Sheryl Lee Ralph told TODAY.com in May. “They won’t be.”
Similarly, the creators of “Stranger Things” announced on Twitter that filming for the supernatural Netflix series would be postponed.
“Writing does not stop when filming begins,” read a tweet from the show’s producers, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer. “While we’re excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out. #wgastrong.”
Several other shows have also paused production, including HBO’s “Hacks,” Apple TV+’s “Severance” and a planned “Game of Thrones” prequel, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.”
On the movie side, pre-production was also paused on Marvel Studios’ vampire thriller, “Blade”, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Late-night talk shows, which rely on teams of writers, have also gone dark.
Seth Meyers, himself a member of the WGA, spoke in support of the strike a few days before NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers” went off the air.
“I … feel very strongly that what the writers are asking for is not unreasonable,” he said on his show on April 24. “And, as a proud member of the guild, I’m very grateful that there is an organization that looks out for the best interests of writers.”
Soap operas, meanwhile, may continue airing fresh content for at least a little while longer. As Vulture reported, “Days of Our Lives” has a backlog of new episodes that will stretch into the fall, while “General Hospital” has “about a month left” of new content.
Note that reality shows, sports, daytime talk shows and news shows are not affected by the strike.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
