CHRIS DELMAS/Getty Images
- In what lasted for almost five months, the writer's strike has seemingly reached an end.
- On Sunday evening, the Writer's Guild of America came to a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios.
- Here's how this impacts the entertainment landscape moving forward.
The Writers Guild of America has arrived at a "tentative agreement" with Hollywood studios, after striking for 146 days.
Following a marathon five-day bargaining session, both the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the WGA released a joint statement Sunday evening, signalling a return to regularly scheduled programming is on the horizon.
Meanwhile, Hollywood's actors remain on strike — SAG-AFTRA, the actor's union, offered its congratulations to WGA — and there are still formalities needed to complete before the strike officially ends, with the WGA emailing its members that "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," it added.
So how will things proceed?
Two successful votes must happen before the strike is over
First, boards of the WGA's eastern and western branches must approve the deal. Then the 11,500 members themselves must vote for approval. Such votes are actually common with Hollywood unions, taking place every time a new three-year contract is negotiated, though they don't normally come at the end of a prolonged strike.
In the last writers strike, in 2008, board members voted two days after a deal was reached, and members voted two days after that. The agreement was approved overwhelmingly, with over 90% of writers voting yes.
That doesn't necessarily mean the vote is a sure thing. Some members are bound to be unsatisfied with the compromises their leaders reached on issues including compensation, the size of writing staffs, and the use of artificial intelligence in scriptwriting, especially after spending nearly five months out of work on picket lines.
When will writers return to work and shows return?
Once the contract is approved, work will resume more quickly for some writers than others. Late-night talk shows were the first to be affected when the strike began, and may be among the first to return to air now. NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and CBS's "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" could come back within days.
But while the show's joke writers will be free to return, many of their usual guests will not, with the ongoing actors strike bringing limits on such appearances. And the shows' returns amid that second strike could prove controversial, as it did for the planned-then-axed resumptions of daytime shows including "The Drew Barrymore Show" and "The Talk."
Film writers will also get back to work on their slower timeline, though those working on scripts or late revisions for already scheduled movies — including "Deadpool 3" and "Superman: Legacy" — will certainly be hustling to crack open their laptops and avoid further release-date delays.
How long will the actors strike last?
The studios that make up the AMPTP opted to finish a deal with writers — who went on strike two months earlier — before even beginning to deal with actors.
Leaders of SAG-AFTRA have said they have received no overtures from the AMPTP since their strike began on July 14. That is likely to change now, and another round of negotiations is likely to begin, though it remains to be seen how long that may take. It was three months into the writers strike before the AMPTP reached out to begin negotiations, and the initial talks sputtered after a just a few days. A month later, the studios came calling again, and this time the deal was done less than a week later.