Word is coming in early this afternoon from Reuters (via The New York Times) that the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) has reached a “tentative deal” with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The deal, which is by no means final, would end the three month walkout that has nearly crippled television production in America and has placed a dark cloud over awards season.
The tentative agreement was announced via email to the 10,500 members of the WGA earlier today.
“While this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success,” WGA West president Patric Verrone and WGA East president Michael Winship said in the memo.
According to the report, the deal “creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, ‘When they get paid, we get paid.'”
Members will get the details when they meet today at 2 p.m. EST in New York and 10 p.m. EST in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. has estimated that the strike has cost the local film and TV industry at least $650 million in wages, with over $1 billion more in lost earnings attributed to the ripple effect in the local economy.
As you can see, it has been a costly strike, the first major Hollywood strike in over 20 years. And as we’ve been reporting all week, it could all be over soon. Of course, we won’t know more about the deal until later tonight when the two factions of the WGA meet in their respective cities, but this appears to be the best news possible at this point. As well, it could be right on time for the Oscars.
Stay tuned for more later this evening.
