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One
of the sources said the negotiating team for the Writers' Guild
of America (WGA) spent the weekend reviewing the proposal from
the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP),
the trade group representing Walt Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros
Discovery and the other major studios and streaming services.
The parties may return to the bargaining table this week, said
the sources, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity
of the negotiations. The two sides had gone about 100 days
without talks.
Another source told Reuters that the studios offered a
concession on one area of concern, the use of artificial
intelligence, agreeing to have human writers credited on
scripts. Bloomberg also reported, citing anonymous sources, that
companies agreed to share access to viewer data, which would
allow writers to gauge the popularity of their series.
The WGA did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, and
the AMPTP declined comment.
"More progress can be made in negotiations when they are
conducted without a blow-by-blow description of the moves on
each side and a subsequent public dissection of the meaning of
the moves," the WGA's negotiating committee told its 11,500
members in an email late Friday.
Writers went on strike May 2 over an impasse on compensation,
minimum staffing in writers' rooms, residual payments and other
issues. They were joined on the picket lines on July 16 by
members of the Screen Actors Guild, effectively halting much of
film and television production.
Officials familiar with the specifics of the studios' proposal
declined to provide details.
The AMPTP had rejected as a "hiring quota" the WGA's demand for
minimum staffing of writers' rooms. Writers have proposed curbs
on the generative artificial intelligence, a complex topic the
studios saw as requiring "a lot more discussion."
On recent corporate earnings calls, studio executives expressed
a desire for a rapid conclusion to the labor unrest.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Mary
Milliken, Cynthia Osterman and Gerry Doyle)
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