Tentative Deal in Writers Strike

For the first time in more than three months, TV showrunners are heading back to the office on Monday with the rest of the scribe tribe due back Wednesday.
The development came with the ruling boards of the Writers Guild of America unanimously approving the tentative deal with the majors, triggering a vote by members that will conclude Tuesday night on whether to lift the strike order. Ballots to ratify the new three-year deal will also go out in the next few days with a 10- to 12-day return period.

The WGA has finalized its tentative agreement with the majors and will present details of the pact to members today in meetings in Los Angeles and New York.

Those meetings — set for the Crowne Plaza in Gotham and the Shrine in Los Angeles — are expected to serve as a barometer for WGA leaders to determine whether the deal’s acceptable to the 10,500 striking writers.

The WGA West board of directors and the WGA East Council will meet Sunday to formally endorse the contract. And writers could be back at work as early Monday, depending on whether the WGA’s ruling bodies decide whether to end the three-month strike at those Sunday meetings.

Leaders of the WGA made the announcement of the finalized deal early Saturday after spending much of Friday meeting with lawyers over the contract language. WGA West president Patric Verrone and WGA East prexy Michael Winship sent a message to members that stressed the gains made in the new-media sector.

“It is an agreement that protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery,” they said. “It 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.’ “