Things are look­ing up in Hol­ly­wood tonight!

From the Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca, here is the word on the out­come of today’s nego­ti­a­tions with the Alliance of Motion Pic­ture and Tele­vi­sion Producers:

Dear mem­bers,

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.

What we have won in this con­tract – most par­tic­u­lar­ly, every­thing we have gained since May 2nd – is due to the will­ing­ness of this mem­ber­ship to exer­cise its pow­er, to demon­strate its sol­i­dar­i­ty, to walk side-by-side, to endure the pain and uncer­tain­ty of the past 146 days. It is the lever­age gen­er­at­ed by your strike, in con­cert with the extra­or­di­nary sup­port of our union sib­lings, that final­ly brought the com­pa­nies back to the table to make a deal.

We can say, with great pride, that this deal is excep­tion­al – with mean­ing­ful gains and pro­tec­tions for writ­ers in every sec­tor of the membership.

What remains now is for our staff to make sure every­thing we have agreed to is cod­i­fied in final con­tract lan­guage. And though we are eager to share the details of what has been achieved with you, we can­not do that until the last “i” is dot­ted. To do so would com­pli­cate our abil­i­ty to fin­ish the job. So, as you have been patient with us before, we ask you to be patient again – one last time.

Once the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment with the AMPTP is com­plete, the Nego­ti­at­ing Com­mit­tee will vote on whether to rec­om­mend the agree­ment and send it on to the WGAW Board and WGAE Coun­cil for approval. The Board and Coun­cil will then vote on whether to autho­rize a con­tract rat­i­fi­ca­tion vote by the membership.

If that autho­riza­tion is approved, the Board and Coun­cil would also vote on whether to lift the restrain­ing order and end the strike at a cer­tain date and time (to be deter­mined) pend­ing rat­i­fi­ca­tion. This would allow writ­ers to return to work dur­ing the rat­i­fi­ca­tion vote, but would not affect the membership’s right to make a final deter­mi­na­tion on con­tract approval.

Imme­di­ate­ly after those lead­er­ship votes, which are ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for Tues­day if the lan­guage is set­tled, we will pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive sum­ma­ry of the deal points and the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment. We will also con­vene meet­ings where mem­bers will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn more about and assess the deal before vot­ing on ratification.

To be clear, no one is to return to work until specif­i­cal­ly autho­rized to by the Guild. We are still on strike until then. But we are, as of today, sus­pend­ing WGA pick­et­ing. Instead, if you are able, we encour­age you to join the SAG-AFTRA pick­et lines this week.

Final­ly, we appre­ci­at­ed your patience as you wait­ed for news from us — and had to fend off rumors — dur­ing the last few days of the nego­ti­a­tion. Please wait for fur­ther infor­ma­tion from the Guild. We will have more to share with you in the com­ing days, as we final­ize the con­tract lan­guage and go through our unions’ processes.

As always, thank you for your sup­port. You will hear from us again very soon.

NPI con­grat­u­lates the WGA (WGAW and WGAE) on reach­ing an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple with the stu­dios that will hope­ful­ly ensure the future of the writ­ing pro­fes­sion in the enter­tain­ment indus­try. With few details to scru­ti­nize at this time, we don’t have much to go on, but it does sound promising.

The Los Ange­les Times report­ed that the accord “would boost pay rates and resid­ual pay­ments for stream­ing shows and impose new rules sur­round­ing the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” It took four long days of nego­ti­a­tions to ham­mer out the agree­ment in prin­ci­ple, which saw per­son­al involve­ment from stu­dio chiefs.

“Day 4 on Sat­ur­day most­ly involved lawyers for the guild and AMPTP hash­ing out the fine print of lan­guage around com­pli­cat­ed and ground­break­ing addi­tions to the WGA’s Min­i­mum Basic Agree­ment,” Vari­ety report­ed. “The nit­ty-grit­ty details of lan­guage around the use of gen­er­a­tive AI in con­tent pro­duc­tion was one of the last items that the sides worked on before clos­ing the pact.

This news undoubt­ed­ly comes as a relief to a lot of peo­ple in show­biz, espe­cial­ly in the Los Ange­les and New York met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. How­ev­er, before Hol­ly­wood can get back to nor­mal busi­ness, the stu­dios will also need to reach an accord with the actors, who remain on strike, as the WGA point­ed out.

“SAG-AFTRA con­grat­u­lates the WGA on reach­ing a ten­ta­tive agree­ment with the AMPTP after 146 days of incred­i­ble strength, resilien­cy and sol­i­dar­i­ty on the pick­et lines,” said the actors’ union in a state­ment. “While we look for­ward to review­ing the WGA and AMPTP’s ten­ta­tive agree­ment, we remain com­mit­ted to achiev­ing the nec­es­sary terms for our mem­bers,” the mes­sage went on to say.

“Since the day the WGA strike began, SAG-AFTRA mem­bers have stood along­side the writ­ers on the pick­et lines. We remain on strike in our TV/Theatrical con­tract and con­tin­ue to urge the stu­dio and stream­er CEOs and the AMPTP to return to the table and make the fair deal that our mem­bers deserve and demand.”

“Though still ten­ta­tive in nature, the agree­ment is a momen­tous devel­op­ment for an indus­try that has been hob­bled by the dou­ble WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the first time both have occurred at once in over six­ty years,” The Hol­ly­wood Reporter point­ed out in its sto­ry on the reach­ing of the agree­ment.

“The WGA strike had an imme­di­ate impact: Film­ing in Los Ange­les declined 29 per­cent between April and June 2023 com­pared with the same peri­od last year as the writ­ers’ work stop­page began May 2, local office Film­LA report­ed on April 19. A wide array of major projects were halt­ed in their tracks and/or post­poned, includ­ing Netflix’s Stranger Things, Apple TV+’s Loot, Marvel’s Blade 2 and Thun­der­bolts and oth­ers. When SAG-AFTRA joined the stop­page, a num­ber of addi­tion­al projects includ­ing Ven­om 3, Glad­i­a­tor 2 and Dead­pool 3 fol­lowed.”