LOS ANGELES — Hollywood writers got their first look Saturday at details of a tentative agreement with studios that could put the strike-crippled entertainment industry back to work, an offer the union’s East Coast president said Saturday he would endorse.
A summary of the proposed deal crafted last week was posted on the Writers Guild of America’s website hours before members were to attend meetings on the East and West coasts to voice their opinions.
The writers gathered behind closed doors Saturday afternoon in New York and were meeting later in Los Angeles to consider the deal that guild leaders said “protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery.”
Compensation for projects delivered via digital media was the central issue in the 3-month-old walkout, which idled thousands of workers, disrupted the TV season and moviemaking and took the shine off Hollywood’s awards season.
“I believe it is a good deal. I am going to be recommending this deal to our membership,” Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, told reporters before the New York meeting at a Times Square hotel.
Writers leaving the two-hour-plus New York meeting characterized the membership’s reaction as generally positive and said there was cautious optimism that the end of the strike — the guild’s first in 20 years — could be near.
“There’s a general feeling of tremendous success. I was delighted,” said TV writer John Simmons, who estimated that about 500 writers were on hand. “We agreed that this looks pretty good. . . . It bodes well for the future.”
He added that there are “always some people who will dissent” and that the complex deal required further scrutiny.
If guild members on both coasts react favorably to the proposed deal, the guild’s board could vote today to lift the strike order, and the industry could be up and running Monday.
