Studios & WGA Reach New Deal With Longer Contract & Health Plan Funds

The Writers Guild of America and the studios and streamers have a tentative deal for a new contract.

With a multi-million dollar contribution to bolster the WGA‘s strained (to put it politely) health plan, the new deal will run for four years. Going into talks with the WGA, SAG-AFTRA and the DGA, securing a longer contract has been a core tenant of the now Greg Hessinger-led Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. 

The (big) deal also includes AI protections and an uptick in fees and residuals for streaming, we’re told.

As always, the provisional agreement between the scribes, who also face striking staff on the West Coast, and the AMPTP will have to be voted on by WGA members to be finalized. Full details about the deal, which comes far ahead of the writers guild’s May 30 contract expiration, are typically released after the ratification.

As we’ve repeatedly reported, jobs, jobs, jobs was at the mutual heart of the talks in a Hollywood hit hard by the movement of production out of America and declining levels of traditional projects on both the small and big screen. That’s likely to be the same for the other two above-the-line unions, which still need to finalize their contracts with the AMPTP.

It remains to be seen how the DGA and SAG-AFTRA might respond to the writers guild agreeing to extend its contract by one year.With the WGA, long the most strident of the guilds, on board, the longer contract could become the norm.

After a pause earlier this month to make way for the WGA talks, negotiation are set to pick up with the Sean Astin-run SAG-AFTRA in June, if not sooner. The Christopher Nolan-led DGA will sit down with ex-SAG boss Hessinger and AMPTP mediators next month.

The fact that the two sides reached a deal relatively expeditiously will come as a surprise to many. In what we hear was a congenial atmosphere very different from the later years of Carol Lombardini’s reign at the AMPTP, the organization and the WGA leadership started talks in mid-March.

“We’ve been talking about all these issues in a very collaborative way,” a labor insider told Deadline of the tone between Executive Director and chief negotiator Ellen Stutzman and the AMPTP in the room at SAG-AFTRA HQ the past few weeks.

Once Stutzman wraps up these joint negotiations for the WGA East and West, she will likely be needed at another bargaining table. The WGA West staff has been on strike for more than seven weeks, having levied several unfair labor practice allegations at the western division’s management. While the WGAW denies any wrongdoing, it appears rank-and-file members are growing frustrated with the way things have played out thus far.

The WGAW has done little to engage with the staff since the work stoppage, though we hear that there has been a few bargaining dates. Clearly, they were not fruitful, considering the staff continued to walk a picket line outside of the SAG-AFTRA building every day during WGA-AMPTP talks.

However, management did try to assuage member concerns that the staff strike would not hinder the dealmaking process. We hear that WGAW management has been pretty laser focused on getting the AMPTP deal done with relative ease and, now that they seem to have accomplished that, will turn their attention to resolving the impasse with staff.

After news broke last week that the striking WGAW staff would be booted off their health insurance plans effective April 1, a person with knowledge said that western executive director Ellen Stutzman has met with the staff union’s leadership twice since AMPTP talks began. In those conversations, she made it clear “what the path to a deal looks like”, one guild source says. That path is basically to take the March 11 deal management put on the table, though we hear there’s some wiggle room.