Panic over, everyone. The dreaded writer’s strike – which would have been the first since 2007 — has been averted as the WGA and major studios managed to reach a deal at the eleventh hour.
It had been festering for a while now, the negations over new contracts between the Writers Guild of America and major studios, with the threat of a strike looming over head, but thankfully we can all now rest easy.
We learnt early last week that the strike had been authorised by the guild as the two parties hadn’t been able to come to an agreement. But the two sides managed to shake hands early on Tuesday with the previous contract having already expired, securing a new deal and in the process averting a strike that would have crippled the industry.
“Your Negotiating Committee is pleased to report that we have reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP that we can recommend for ratification,” the WGA told their members. “In it, we made gains in minimums across the board – as well as contribution increases to our Health Plan that should ensure its solvency for years to come. And we further expanded our protections in Options and Exclusivity. We also made unprecedented gains on the issue of short seasons in television, winning a definition (which has never before existed in our MBA) of 2.4 weeks of work for each episodic fee. Any work beyond that span will now require additional payment for hundreds of writer-producers.”
While admitting that they didn’t get everything they wanted, with the admitted gains over payment for shorter seasons of TV – something that is becoming more and more common – and a $15 million increase in SVOD residuals, it seems to have been enough to warrant an agreement.
Fingers crossed that this is the last we hear of a writers strike for quite some time.
Originally published May 2, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
