Is This The Beginning of The End of The Writers Strike?

It took 92 days, but the stalemate between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood’s biggest studios and streamers has come to an end. On Tuesday, Carol Lombardini, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, reached out to WGA leadership to request a meeting to discuss restarting contract negotiations, which have been on pause since writers decided to strike on May 1. They are scheduled to sit down on Friday, the WGA shared with its 11,500 members in an email sent late Tuesday night.

A meeting between the two at-odds groups doesn’t mean that talks will immediately resume, but it is a clear sign that the ice has thawed after a three-month work stoppage. The WGA said it would share updates with its members after the meeting, cautioning them to be wary of rumors: “Whenever there is important news to share, you will hear it directly from us.” 

This was going to happen eventually. “They will come back to us,” WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser said in a July 26 video updating members on the strike. But when exactly was up for debate. Predicting when the strike will end has become Hollywood’s favorite parlor game, with guesses ranging from fall to, at their most extreme, early next year. 

For several weeks, the writers seemed like they would be in this fight alone. In early June, the Directors Guild of America reached a deal that included an increase in foreign residuals and confirmation that AI cannot replace work performed by members. But the July 14 decision by SAG-AFTRA to send its 160,000 actor and performer members out on strike, shutting down nearly all scripted television and film production, has ratcheted up the pressure on the studios to resume negotiations. Though the studios were prepared to weather some production delays, a complete work stoppage that lasts through Labor Day could be catastrophic, threatening the fall TV season, pushing back big-budget movie premieres, and throwing awards season into disarray. (The Emmys, which were scheduled to air Sept. 18, have already been postponed, and fall is when Oscar campaigning kicks into high gear.) 

Both strikes will need to be resolved in order for Hollywood to get fully back to work, but it might be easier for the AMPTP to reach an agreement with the WGA at this time. While the actors’ fight is still fresh—SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said during a Tuesday morning interview on the Today show that the guild has “financially prepared ourselves for the next six months”—the battle with the writers is creeping closer to the 100-day mark, the point at which the 2007 strike was coming to an end. 

“We remain committed to finding a path to mutually beneficial deals with both unions,” a spokesman for the AMPTP said in a statement.

Representatives from the studios met last Friday to discuss finding a path to resume negotiations. But as recently as Tuesday morning, the other WGA negotiating committee co-chair, David Goodman, told Vanity Fair that the guild had not yet received a call from the AMPTP. “We’re ready to go back to the table, we’re ready to end this, but we’ll fight for as long as we have to,” he said. “We’ve got no official outreach yet but we’re ready, whenever they want.” 

Even if talks do resume soon, they won’t necessarily lead to a quick resolution. The two sides ended talks far apart on several key issues, including how to regulate the use of AI. The writers are also asking for raises and increases in streaming residuals. As Keyser noted recently, “saying no to labor in unison is a lot easier than saying yes.”