Five months of strikes ended as the Writers Guild of America met a deal with Hollywood studios in which higher wages and more protections were demanded.
The proposed deal has almost all 11,500 writers involved rejoicing. Members of WGA picketed in the streets of Los Angeles to respond to threats of Artificial Intelligence generated screenplay and loss of royalties and independence due to streaming services.
Important rights were bargained for, such as a minimum number of writers hired per scheduled number of episodes in a series. The demands also centered around transparency from studios, including disclosing the exact number of writers involved previously to any writers who were hired later in the process, and whether any generative AI had been used for any of the material.
It was also demanded that the studios pay royalties to writers for shows and movies that were distributed to streaming services. Prior to streaming services, any television-broadcasted show or movie would incur royalties that would be distributed to writers upon reruns of those media. Streaming services did not require this, which ultimately disincentivized writers from making quality products and to instead make mediocre ones.
Studios were incredibly resistant to giving royalties to media on streaming services, however, because that would require that all financial information be distributed to those writers, to ensure that royalties were being properly assigned.
This would potentially cause major problems for studios. Large amounts of detailed financial information could be exploited and illegally distributed to competing studios by the writers for their own gain.
As indicated in the deal, the decision is to allow for the WGA to have full access to the information, and then use only that to determine which funds are to be distributed to individuals without disclosing any information to other parties.
The end of the strikes has now allowed for media to go back into production.
