The Writers Guild of America announced the deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group that represents studios, streaming services and producers in negotiations.
“WGA has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP,” said in an email to members.
“This was made possible by the enduring solidarity of WGA members and extraordinary support of our union siblings who joined us on the picket lines for over 146 days.”
The three-year contract agreement, settled on after five marathon days of renewed talks by negotiators WGA and the AMPTP – must be approved by the guild’s board and members before the strike officially ends.
The terms of the deal were not immediately announced. The tentative deal to end the last writers strike, in 2008, was approved by more than 90 per cent of members. The agreement comes just five days before the strike would’ve become the longest in the guild’s history, and the longest Hollywood strike in decades.
As a result of the agreement, nightly network shows including NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” could return to the air within days. But as writers prepare to potentially crack open their laptops again, it’s far from back to business as talks have not yet resumed between studios and striking actors.
The proposed solution to the writers strike comes after talks resumed on Wednesday or the first time in a month. Chief executives including Bob Iger of Disney, Ted Sarandos of Netflix, David Zaslav of Warner Bros., Discovery and Donna Langley of NBCUniversal reportedly took part in the negotiations directly.
The Emmy Awards were also pushed from September to January. .
About 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America walked off the job May 2 over issues of pay, the size of writing staffs on shows and the use of artificial intelligence in the creation of scripts.
Actors, who joined the writers on strike, have their issues but there have been no discussions about resuming negotiations with their union yet. (IANS)
