A tentative agreement in the 3 month old Writer’s Guild strike was announced over night. Today, writers will meet on the East and West coasts to hear details of the deal and give it a thumbs up or down. The deal is a bit better in new media areas than the DGA agreement, but only incrementally.
“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.’ “
Verrone and Winship said in the message that the time has come to end the strike and cited the “enormous personal toll on our members and countless others.”
“As such, we believe that continuing to strike now will not bring sufficient gains to outweigh the potential risks and that the time has come to accept this contract and settle the strike,” they said. “Much has been achieved, and while this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success.”
It’s late and I have to get to bed…but it seems to me like an acceptable but not great offer. I think the membership will go for it though, of course, there will be those who will feel that after however-many-days-it’s-been, the terms should be better. They are not wrong about that but I suspect it’s the best deal we’re going to get at this time. It does seem better on several points than the Directors Guild deal and one wonders if the DGA has some kind of “favored nations” provision that will upgrade those deal points to match ours.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Steven Zeitchik runs down some of the movie projects that are ready to get moving again if the strike as settled, as everyone is hoping.
After returning from the Saturday-night WGA meeting, Mark Evanier posts at his blog that he likes the tentative deal better now that the terms have been explained more thoroughly. Barring any major surprises, the strike is probably over as soon as the members vote on the contract.