Writers Guild Reaches Tentative Four-Year Deal With Studios

The Writers Guild of America has reached a tentative four-year deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers group representing studios and streamers, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

On Saturday, Puck reporter Matt Belloni reported on the agreement, saying it adds one more year to the WGA’s usual three-year deal and that it includes “Health plan/pension increases, SVOD bumps [and] protection to police licensing for AI training.” THR understands from a source close to the discussions that those details are accurate. 

A tentative deal still is subject to a ratification vote by members.

Before talks began, the guild outlined its negotiation priorities for a new contract, including bolstering the union’s health plan, increasing AI protections and improving compensation.

As THR has previously reported, the WGA’s health fund cumulatively lost $122 million in 2023 and 2024, according to tax returns, as a decline in Hollywood work and general health care inflation took their tolls.

The union also sought to secure more protections against AI. Though the protections the WGA enshrined in its contract in 2023 were generally considered strong, the union wanted to expand these as the technology develops.

And like all unions, the WGA was intent on boosting compensation to its members. The WGA sought to increase minimum compensation rates, raising minimums for “page one” rewrites and residuals for reuse in streaming and focusing on pay rates for writers in post-production as well as comedy/variety, quiz and audience writers.

The WGA followed the performers’ union SAG-AFTRA in its negotiations with the AMPTP, with SAG-AFTRA beginning negotiations on Feb. 9. Yet SAG-AFTRA failed to reach a new deal with studios, it was announced on March 15, shortly after the Oscars. Negotiations are set to continue on that union’s next deal covering film and TV work in the spring ahead of the contract’s June 30 expiration.

The WGA deal also comes as the WGA West’s own staff union remains on strike, with the striking staffers losing their health coverage this past week.

The recent WGA negotiations with the AMPTP mark the first time the guild has sat down at the bargaining table with major companies — including Netflix, Warner Bros., Universal and Paramount, among others — since it waged a 148-day strike over issues including compensation in the streaming age and generative AI in 2023. SAG-AFTRA later joined the striking writers for the first dual strike of writers and actors in more than 60 years.

Since then, the industry has undergone a painful contraction that has squeezed employment at all levels of the business. In 2024, one year after the WGA’s strike, writer employment was down 9.4 percent from one year previously (the year of the strike, which de facto restricts employment) and 24.3 percent below 2022, according to the guild’s annual financial report.

The union’s negotiations were led by chief negotiator Ellen Stutzman alongside negotiating committee co-chairs John August and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel. The AMPTP is led by new president Gregory Hessinger, who succeeded longtime head Carol Lombardini in 2025.

More to come.