The Writers Guild of America’s (WGA) second-longest strike in the union’s history ended Wednesday — 148 days after it began — with a tentative agreement between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
While the new three-year contract has not yet been ratified by the union’s members, WGA said writers are allowed to work during the voting process. Once the vote is complete, and the contract is approved, the minimum weekly pay for writers will increase by more than 12%.
Despite AMPTP’s agreement with the writers, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) is still in negotiations.
“I’m feeling encouraged that the SAG strike is going to end hopefully relatively soon,” said Sparrow Nicole, an actress and USC film production student. “But then, what the strike ending and what the new deals are going to mean is anybody’s guess.”
Nicole said she is putting a lot of time into learning the production side of filmmaking while also prioritizing her acting career. She is an active member of SAG-AFTRA and has appeared in Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” Prime Video’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” and HBO Max’s “Doom Patrol.”
“Streaming is really where most of my work comes from,” Nicole said. “And, you know, when it comes to the writers’ strike, it’s so insane that before this new deal that’s come out, the way they were compensated wasn’t accounting for streaming. That’s just so crazy because it’s the biggest thing in the industry right now.”
The AMPTP is a trade association that includes over 350 motion picture and television producers including major film production studios like Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., broadcast television networks like ABC, FOX, and NBC and streaming services like Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon.
For many, the strikes are seen as pushing back against corporate greed in an industry loved for its artistic abilities.
Anabela Nguyen, an actor and recent graduate of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, spoke with Annenberg Media about the impact the strikes have had on her life as an actor.
“I can’t really move forward with a career in Hollywood because of the strike,” Nguyen said. “I should be getting a couple of [auditions] a week, you know, at least once a week. So for the past four months, to have only two auditions is crazy, and I’ve talked to all my friends about it, and they have the exact same problem.”
The agreement that the WGA reached showed clear breakthroughs that writers had been asking for when the strike was authorized. Most notable were the deals secured for better streaming residuals and restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence (AI), two large points of contention that writers felt posed the greatest threat to their work and livelihood.
For projects released in and after 2024, writers will see compensation based on the watch time data recorded by the streaming platforms, which will be shared with the guild. Studios are also not permitted to use AI to write or rewrite material, and writers cannot be forced to use AI in their writing processes.
“It’s a scary thing for all workers,” Nicole said. “I always thought as an actor, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be fine. No way AI is stealing my job’. And then it’s like, ‘Oh, there we go.’”
“It’s scary for big-name actors whose likenesses they want to steal and not compensate them for, and they also are trying to steal the likenesses of background actors to have the same background people in every crowd,” Nicole continued. “It’s just a really scary concept.”
USC Professor and former WGA President Howard Rodman said the protections included in the agreement would not just secure the jobs and livelihoods of the writers, but would also maintain and improve the quality of their work.
“I would hope that the economic security afforded by having sustained and continuing careers allows people to be more imaginative, more creative, more insurrectionary,” Rodman said. “When you’re trying to put food on the table, and terrified that you won’t be able to…it’s not easy to be creative. When the economic part is taken care of, or at least somewhat, it’s a lot easier to say, ‘Hey, what do I want to write today?’”
Rodman said he hopes the WGA agreement gives actors the motivation they need to stay on strike until they “get what they need.”
“We, in the same way that they were on the picket line with us even before they were on strike, will be on the picket line with them, supporting them,” Rodman said.
The SAG-AFTRA strike is still going strong, with the guild authorizing a possible second strike against the video game industry, though it’s important to note that the authorization doesn’t guarantee a strike will happen. It does, however, show how pervasive the issues facing actors in the entertainment industry are at large, both financially and creatively.
“I think a lot of actors, even in huge big-budget movies, are still producing amazing artwork that really means a lot, and I think a lot of writers are still trying to write things that are really meaningful,” said Sparrow. “But I hope that Hollywood is going to be able to not just be controlled by money and that art is still going to be able to shine through.”