The nearly 4-month long writer’s strike is offer as it is highly expected that members will vote to accept the contract worked out between the leadership of the WGA and AMPTP.
TV writers that also share duties as producers and showrunners will return to work today (Mon. Feb. 11), while the rest of the 12,000 members of the Guild begin filtering back into their respective offices on Wednesday of this week.
Work will immediately begin on all the new shows slated to return to fulfill their seasons, as well as shows returning for their remaining seasons, however it could be up to a month or even longer before anything new is seen on the small screen.
The return of the writers also guarantees a smooth return of the Academy Awards ceremony that will air on February 24th.
WGA West prexy Patric Verrone told guild members Sunday to put away their picket signs. The ruling boards of the Writers Guild of America unanimously gave the thumbs-up to a three-year tentative deal with the major studios and networks.
The next step is to get approval by members on lifting the strike. Members will vote by fax or in person at specified meetings; the vote concludes Tuesday night. It is expected to pass without difficulty.
After that, the members will be asked in a separate vote whether to OK the new three-year deal, according to Variety. Those ballots go out in the next few days, with a 10- to 12-day return period, however workers can still be expected to return to work this week. If, in some unforeseen circumstance, the members reject the offer, then they could be back on the picket lines in two weeks. However, the WGA leadership is fairly confident that members will vote to accept the offer.
There is one cautionary note. Some issues regarding the New Media compensation points are still being worked out by Guild leaders and AMPTP lawyers. Also the new contract doesn’t address those who were force majeure’d from overall deals and other contracts if they were not working on a series that will resume production.
Hopefully this means we get the full 16 ep run of Lost this year. And that we get the final seven of Battlestar.
Huzzah!!!
BSG is slated to come back in October… grr.
But at least 24 can get started!
“Lost” will probably only get 5-6 more, which sucks, but it’s better than the alternative. I imagine the total through the end will still be 48, though.
“BSG” is still up in the air, but it’s possible that there’s less in the can than originally thought. According to Moore and the cast, someone saw that the last production number was 413 and assumed that 13 episodes were shot. But “Razor” was considered 401/402, and 413 actually turned out to be the production number for the mid-season break. So unless Moore’s clarification was off the mark, there’s still 10 remaining episodes to be produced to finish out “BSG”.
The fact that the major points that they went on strike for are either not included in or not yet worked out for this contract bugs me. A lot.
Put Journeyman back on the slate for Fall 2008, dammit. And give us a Dresden Files miniseries while you’re at it (because we know that SciFi miniseries are almost always better than the movies).