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The Writers Strike Has Ended. Here's The WGA's Deal With The AMPTP
WGA members and supporters picket outside Warner Brothers in Burbank.
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Robert Garrova
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LAist
)
The historic Hollywood strike will come to an end at midnight after nearly five months of picketing.
The Writers Guild of America sent out a statement Tuesday afternoon letting members know that guild leadership voted unanimously to recommend the agreement brokered with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Eligible WGA members will receive voting materials in the mail and voting will take place from Oct. 2-9. If ratified, the contract will run through May 1, 2026.
The guild leadership also unanimously voted to end the strike as of 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday. “This allows writers to return to work during the ratification process, but does not affect the membership's right to make a final determination on contract approval,” the WGA said.
The details of the contract, which were also made public today, represent substantial wins for Hollywood writers, including on staffing requirements for shows, success-based residuals and protections related to artificial intelligence.
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What The WGA Won In Its New Deal
- Pay: Most minimums will increase by 5% on ratification of the contract, 4% the following year (beginning May 2, 2024), and 3.5% the year after that. Some minimums and rates increase less.
- Artificial intelligence: The new deal sets several regulations, including that "AI can’t write or rewrite literary material, and AI-generated material will not be considered source material." A company must disclose to a writer if any materials given to the writer have been generated by AI. And a writer has the option to choose to use AI in their work with certain provisions.
- Streaming: The WGA negotiated a new residual based on viewership, and will gain access to streaming data under a confidentiality agreement. There's also a substantial increase for foreign streaming residuals.
- Script fees: Staff writers will now be paid script fees for the episodes they write.
- Staffing: The deal adds a new writer-producer tier above executive story editor.
- Room size: Shows that have been greenlit will now have a minimum number of writers based on the number of episodes, but with at least three writer-producers minimum. There are exceptions where a single writer may be employed to write all episodes.
- Writing teams: Each member of a writing team will now receive pension and health contributions as though each is a single writer, rather than splitting them.
Here are some of the provisions in the WGA's new deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
“This is the biggest contract that the Writers Guild has ever won, or at least in very many decades,” WGA negotiating committee member Adam Conover told LAist. “We got so many enormous victories."
Conover said that the committee had been hearing from fellow writers who were pleased with the details of the contract.
“We won all of this together with our solidarity,” Conover said. “Just 10,000 writers standing together was able to get these giant corporations to open their checkbooks and to finally pay us.”
The AMPTP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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