Agreement Reached to End Hollywood Screenwriters’ Five-Month Strike

One of the two walkouts that have halted film and TV production has been resolved as Hollywood screenwriters on strike have reached a preliminary labor agreement with studios such as Walt Disney Co. and Netflix Inc.

The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,500 Hollywood scribes, said Sunday it had reached an agreement with the studios’ bargaining group, the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. The agreement will end the strike that began on May 2, if accepted by guild members.

The temporary three-year contract requires the completion of the contract language and the recommendations of the union’s council and government, which could come as early as Tuesday. Members would vote after that, although union leadership may allow them to return to work before the final result.

“We can say with great pride that this agreement is exceptional – with meaningful benefits and protections for writers across all sectors of the membership,” the guild said in a statement.

Read more: The Hollywood strike is coming to an end. That’s how it happened.

Writers went on strike for the first time since 2007 to fight for higher pay for streaming services that have reshaped how TV is made and talent hired. The Screen Actors Guild joined them in July over similar concerns.

Details of the deal won’t be made public for a few days, but people familiar with the matter previously said the writers won concessions on key points, including salary increases.

The studios have agreed to employ a certain number of writers on their TV shows, a number that increases with the number of episodes in a season, one of the people said. The parties have also created a structure where writers receive bonuses for popular shows on streaming services.

And it seems they’ve also come to an agreement on the use of artificial intelligence, which the authors feared would destroy jobs.

The deal paves the way for soap operas, game shows and late-night talk shows to resume, but production on most dramatic shows will remain on hold until the walkout ends.

According to London media analyst Alex DeGroote, the momentum gained from the agreement should help resolve the operators’ strike quickly. Even so, it will take some time for big-budget shows and movies to go ahead, he said.

“Movie theaters around the world can celebrate,” AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. CEO Adam Aron said at X. “Very good news that progress is being made.”

Production on hundreds of movies and TV shows was halted as a result of the strikes, affecting not only writers and actors, but also directors, crew members, and industries such as restaurants and real estate. With less money coming in, talent agencies laid off workers and studios cut deals with major producers to cut costs. Awards have been delayed and film festivals have been held without stars. The walkout has delayed the return of new shows for the fall TV season, and many movies premiering this year were pushed back to 2024.

The studios’ shares fluctuated on Monday. Netflix was up 0.7% at 9:54 a.m. and Disney was up 0.5%. Warner Bros Discovery Inc. fell 0.8% and Paramount Global was little changed.

The studios and writers came nowhere close to an agreement before the strike began, and the studios and writers then did not negotiate for months, with thousands of guild members protesting outside studio offices from New York to Los Angeles. . While the economics of streaming remained the guilds’ primary focus, the threat of artificial intelligence also emerged as a growing concern.

The leaders of the major media companies became more engaged in the dispute in late July and early August, when operators joined the strike. In August, the studios offered a new proposal that addressed many, but not all, of the writers’ concerns. The parties negotiated for a couple of weeks before parting again.

The September negotiations came as a surprise. The two sides hadn’t spoken – at least not officially – and many studio executives were debating whether it was time to deal with the actors.

But the pressure on both sides to cancel the agreement had increased. Studios feared the impact of months without the ability to produce new shows, and many writers began pressuring their union executives to cut their contracts so everyone could get back to work.

People who work in entertainment, whether they’re writers or screenwriters, started leaving Los Angeles because of the lack of progress. Prominent writers asked to meet with guild leadership to discuss the state of negotiations, and several talk shows said they would return, only to cancel their plans under pressure from unions.

When the latest talks began, four of entertainment’s most powerful executives — Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, Disney CEO Bob Iger, Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav and NBCUniversal chief content officer Donna Langley — joined their labor talks.

The studios and writers negotiated for several days. After months of public hazing and finger-pointing, the two sides kept public communications to a minimum as they struck a deal to get the industry back to work.

While the writers’ rooms may soon reopen, a return to production will have to await the agreement of striking actors who have picketed from coast to coast, shutting down productions that tried to restart. This was the first time in over 60 years that both Writers and Actors went on strike at the same time. The Directors Guild of America signed a new contract with the studios in June.