On September 27, 2023, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike officially ended after months of intense negotiations with television and film producers. Lasting 148 days, this is the second longest WGA strike, followed by the 1988 strike which ran 153 days. However, the end of this strike doesn’t automatically mean all is well in the entertainment industry, especially considering the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. So, what happens now that the WGA strike has ended? First, let’s recap the strike.
Talks of a writers’ strike began in March 2023 when the WGA urged their members to vote “yes” to a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The WGA’s three-year contract with the AMPTP was set to expire on May 1, and the two sides couldn’t agree on a new contract, leading to 98.75% of WGA union members voting in favor of the strike. The strike officially began on May 2 after six weeks of negotiating with AMPTP and failing to establish a fair deal for writers. On July 14, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joined writers on strike after failed negotiations with the AMPTP. Writers, actors and other entertainment professionals spent over 100 days picketing in support of WGA and SAG-AFTRA. Fortunately, on September 24, the WGA and the AMPTP came to a three-year contract agreement that acknowledged the core issues of the strike, including “wage increases, better residual payouts, staffing minimums, and guidelines around the use of artificial intelligence.” The WGA strike officially ended on September 27, but the SAG-AFTRA strike is still occurring as of October 2023.
Now that the writer’s strike has ended, over 11,500 writers can return to work after nearly five months. Live television programs such as “Saturday Night Live” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” have resumed production after receiving the guild’s greenlight for writers to proceed working. However, the SAG-AFTRA strike has yet to resolve, meaning the fate of our favorite movies and shows is still unknown. Many productions that were shut down or paused due to the strikes, including the final season of “Stranger Things”, “Deadpool 3” and Quentin Tarantino’s newest film, “The Movie Critic”, will have to wait for actors to reach an agreement with producers before filming restarts. J.D. Connor, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Southern California tells Variety, “Networks are going to really want to move things through quickly, as quickly as they can …” and says that there will be an “… overlap between writing and shooting in an even more compressed way than we’ve gotten to in this time-delivery system,”. Once an agreement is made for actors, it is expected that studios will expedite production to release the countless long-awaited films and TV shows.
The end of the writers’ strike marks a positive turning point for the entertainment industry’s future by providing writers the compensation they deserve. While many television programs and films can resume production, the ongoing actors’ strike means the industry’s fate is still uncertain. Both strikes are indicators of the much-needed change that needs to ensue within the industry so writers, actors and all other entertainment professionals are guaranteed fair contracts.
References
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