Writers Guild reach tentative agreement with AMPTP

The Writers Guild reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to end its strike after nearly five months.

The parties finalised the framework of the deal Sunday when they were able to work through their stalemate over AI and writing room staffing levels.

“We have reached a tentative agreement on a new 2023 MBA, which is to say an agreement in principle on all deal points, subject to drafting final contract language,” the WGA told its members in a release, which came just after sunset and the start of the Yom Kippur holiday that many had seen as a deadline to wrap up a deal after five days of long negotiations.

Next steps in process will see the WGA negotiating committee vote on “whether to recommend the agreement and send it on to the WGAW Board and WGAE Council for approval” in votes tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. Another vote by the respective board and council could lift the strike “restraining order” and allow scribes to return to work during the ratification vote – a big deal for both the WGA and the studios. Pending those votes, the WGA told its members that the guild is still on strike, but picketing is suspended.

The studios inquired if, once a tentative agreement is ratified, the writers would pick up their pens soon afterwards. The guild, from what we understand, had made the request that their members not return to work until SAG-AFTRA also had a new agreement with the AMPTP, reflective of the WGA’s feeling of solidarity between the two unions that has characterized their first mutual strike since 1960. The above-mentioned vote to lift the strike restraining order seems to be the compromise the two sides agreed upon.