The leaders of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the powerful screenwriters’ union, approved Tuesday evening the recent salary agreement concluded with the studios and recorded the return to work of their members on Wednesday, after a strike which lasted almost five months and paralyzed Hollywood.
The union’s board of directors “voted unanimously to recommend the salary agreement,” he said on X, formerly Twitter. “The strike ends at 12:01 a.m. Los Angeles time on Wednesday. Concretely, the agreement can theoretically still be rejected by the 11,500 screenwriters represented by the WGA in the United States: it must be the subject of a vote, which will take place “between October 2 and 9”, announced the syndicate.
But most industry experts believe this ratification should be a formality. While waiting for the process to be completed, industry professionals will be able to return to work on Wednesday.
Many American series and films stuck in the early stages of writing will thus be able to be restarted. Late-night talk shows, hosted by hosts who need scripts, are also expected to return to the air sometime next month.
By presenting the agreement reached with the studios on Sunday, after five days of a new round of negotiations, the WGA assured that it was an “exceptional” compromise. According to her, it includes “significant gains” in terms of remuneration as well as protective measures to regulate the use of artificial intelligence.
But even after the final ratification of the screenwriters, Hollywood will still be far from a return to normal. Because the actors, represented by the SAG-AFTRA union, are still on strike. A resolution to this social conflict, which has been going on since mid-July, could take several more weeks. Because some of SAG-AFTRA’s demands go further than those of the WGA.
The negotiations therefore promise to be difficult. Especially since the studios know that what they release to the actors will serve as a standard for the technical professions in the industry, whose collective agreements must be renewed next year.
Even after the actors return to work, it will surely still take months to really get everyone back on set and catch up on the backlogs accumulated by a myriad of Hollywood productions.