The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have agreed to resume negotiations next week.
The AMPTP said in a statement that the writers’ guild reached out to the studio coalition on Wednesday to request a meeting “to move negotiations forward.”
“We have agreed and are working to schedule a meeting next week,” the AMPTP said Thursday. “Every member company of the AMPTP is committed and eager to reach a fair deal, and to working together with the WGA to end the strike.”
The upcoming meeting would mark the first between the WGA negotiating committee and the studios’ labor reps since a tense meeting on Aug. 22 in which multiple CEOs, including Disney’s Bob Iger and Universal’s Donna Langley, were in attendance.
The WGA sent a memo to members after the AMPTP released its statement, confirming the development.
“The WGA and AMPTP are in the process of scheduling a time to get back in the room,” said the message, signed “In solidarity, WGA Negotiating Committee.”
The WGA had said earlier in a memo to members that the CEOs urged the guild to accept a previous proposal presented by the studios on Aug. 11, and publicly released that proposal after the guild held firm on its core demands. The release of the proposal, meant to gain support among the WGA rank-and-file, was instead largely panned by members.
Over the last three weeks, the WGA and AMPTP have accused each other of delaying talks, saying the onus is on the other side to present the next counterproposal to keep talks moving.
Insiders told TheWrap this week that some studio executives, frustrated with the stalled talks with the WGA, were floating the idea of pivoting to resuming talks with SAG-AFTRA. But the new talks have revived hope that a WGA deal could be back on the table.
What is less clear is what sticking point the two sides will discuss when talks resume. Much of the negotiations that took place in August largely centered around protections against artificial intelligence abuse, but the WGA said in a memo sent on Aug. 24 that the AMPTP’s proposal was “not nothing, nor nearly enough.”
Among the areas where the guild feels the studios’ offer falls short is on the issue of streaming viewership data. The AMPTP offered to provide the WGA with a quarterly report on streaming viewership with the purpose of allowing the guild to craft a compensation structure proposal during the next round of contract negotiations in 2026.
But the WGA rejected this as insufficient, as the data could only be viewed by a handful of members in the guild and could not be shared with the creators of streaming shows and films. A lack of transparency in the performance of streaming titles has been a major point of frustration for members of both WGA and SAG-AFTRA.
