Hollywood’s Halt Nears a Close as Historic Writers’ Strike Subsides

By Anne Chen

Summer blockbusters like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” took Hollywood by storm, but so did the 148-day-long Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike. After a longstanding union strike that put Hollywood on pause with major productions like “Stranger Things” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” shutting down, studios are finalizing deals with writers that would conclude one of the industry’s longest strikes.

WGA members went on strike in May when contracts with film and television studios expired. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — an association that includes big industry players like Warner Bros. and Netflix — failed to renew revised contracts with the WGA, causing an upsurge in calls for fair wages, streaming residuals, and protections against artificial intelligence.

The strike gained further momentum when Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joined in July. Florence Pugh, Adam Sandler and other A-list actors hit the picket lines alongside screenwriters, forming a double strike against major Hollywood studios that suspended production all summer. Both groups share a firm opposition against changes like diminished residu- al payments which would complicate the lives of writers and actors, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck. Additionally, the rapid rise of AI in the past year has raised concerns about algorithms mimicking creative professionals’ likeness and intellectual property, provoking strikers to advocate for guidelines to safeguard jobs.

This past summer, viewers may not have noticed a drastic change in their streaming activities as they continued to enjoy new TV content like “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Since many productions banked a great supply of entertainment from prior months or even years, average viewers have not felt the strikes’ true gravity.

Nevertheless, Hollywood entered its dark days. The rollback of production has run entertainment dry, and the strikes have inflicted a hemorrhaging of at least 17,000 industry jobs, according to an August report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, final deals are underway to close the contract negotiations, led by the executives of Disney, Warner Bros., Discovery, Netflix and NBCUniversal. A week of bargaining in late September established details for a new tentative contract, covering fresh ground, like AI provisions. Responding to pressures from the guilds, studios are largely meeting demands for workers’ benefits and compensation. The WGA’s 11,000 members must still ratify the new contract Looking forward, it’s expected that productions will gradually return and recover from the summer of strikes, meaning that fall TV may experience further delay before reaching viewers’ screens. Viewers can anticipate new seasons like new reality shows like “The Golden Bachelor” releasing soon, while of “Abbot Elementary and Grey’s Anatomy” hold back from networks.