The vibes couldn’t be more different from 2023.
In the wake of a surprise deal struck by the Writers Guild of America with studios and streamers and announced on Saturday, arriving earlier than many expected, WGA members expressed gratitude they weren’t about to face another down-to-the-wire negotiation or strike like they did just three years prior.
The 2023 writers’ strike, widely supported within the union three years ago, has cast a long shadow and many writers weren’t eager to face a repeat of the labor action. “I think everyone’s very relieved,” showrunner David H. Steinberg (No Good Nick) said in an interview. “It sort of came out of the blue that all of a sudden a tentative agreement had been reached and all the writers that I talked to on social media were like, ‘thank God.’”
“We’re obviously still waiting on the details but anything that calms the industry down is the most important thing in my book,” wrote member Geoff Roth in a message. “The whole business needs to walk back from this existential cliff we’re constantly being told about, as it’s becoming self-fulfilling.”
The union hasn’t yet released any detailed materials describing the proposed contract language, so opinions could change once members see the fine print. So far, the WGA has only disclosed to members that the provisional agreement will span four years rather than the union’s typical three. The agreement “protects our health plan” with higher contributions and contribution caps and “builds on gains from 2023 and helps address free work challenges,” the union said.
But what the WGA has said has been enough to get writers talking. The expansion of the contract term from three to four years represents a potentially risky move for the labor group given the rapid changes — consolidation, cost-cutting and the use of generative AI among them — currently roiling Hollywood. An extended deal means that the WGA may have to wait longer to make significant contractual changes if issues crop up in the next few years.
Most writers who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter weren’t disturbed by the paradigm shift. “The extra year on the term is a bit of a bitter pill given the rapid pace of AI evolution but it was a necessary — and quite predictable — trade-off to save the health fund,” wrote Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim in a text. “This is kinda where I assumed we’d end up.” Overall, he’s pleased with what he knows about the deal so far.
There’s also the issue of the WGA potentially having just dislodged itself from its typical negotiating schedule. The union usually bargains in the same year as performers’ union SAG-AFTRA and directors’ union the Directors Guild of America. It’s not clear whether those two unions will change their customary three-year contract lengths in their own negotiations, which could upset the usual schedule. Bargaining in the same year, the thinking goes, can boost all three unions by allowing them to align pressure campaigns and/or work stoppages.
That concern doesn’t bother Steinberg. “I’m aware of what the issue is, that you want to be aligned with the other deals to bring pressure if you need to,” says Steinberg. But, he notes, the AMPTP had at the very least been considering asking for a five-year contract term, as THR has previously reported. Paired with the WGA’s usual three-year term, four years “seems like a great compromise,” he adds.
The relative speed with which Saturday’s deal was struck represented another pivot for the WGA in 2026. The union is known for deploying aggressive tactics like negotiating down to the last minute of a contract’s term and/or taking a strike authorization vote to increase leverage.
But the WGA did not, in the end, deploy this longtime playbook. The union and the studios tidily wrapped up their tentative deal within the three weeks that constituted the WGA’s first scheduled bargaining period. (Otherwise the two sides certainly could have penciled in additional time before May 1, when the WGA’s 2023 contract officially expires.) The union never took a strike authorization vote, even to apply pressure.
The speed of negotiations has prompted some misgivings and nerves in at least one writers’ group chat, said a source. Another source noted that their peers seemed relieved but largely cynical and checked out in this negotiation, compared with the high levels of engagement in 2023.
Still, many members who spoke with THR argued that industry conditions in 2026 may have required a fresh approach. Writer employment has declined compared with the high-flying era of “Peak TV,” when streamers were more focused on attracting subscribers than earning a profit. And WGA leaders made no secret about the dire state of their health fund, which lost a cumulative $122 million in the fiscal years of 2023 and 2024.
The WGA was led by chief negotiator Ellen Stutzman as well as co-chairs of the negotiating committee John August and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel and union president Michele Mulroney in talks with the studios, which were repped by the Gregory Hessinger-led Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The contraction in work “put a lot of stress on our fund because fewer writers working means decreased contributions coming into the plan,” Mulroney previously told THR.
In 2026, in other words, the WGA was in a very different position that it was three years prior, when its leaders felt emboldened to sustain a 148-day strike in order to reshape payment in the streaming era and establish inaugural protections against generative AI. Its members, many still fatigued from the 2023 strike, don’t seem poised — at least for now — to nitpick their deal or criticize their union for not pushing hard enough.
“The Writers Guild made it clear that the priority going into the negotiations was to shore up the pension and health funds,” says Steinberg. “So mission accomplished, I guess.”
