EXCLUSIVE: “This strike was way too long, because the companies took so long to get serious,” WGA West President Meredith Stiehm declared tonight of the nearly 150 days the Writers Guild was out on the picket lines before a tentative agreement was reached on September 24. “I feel sad and pained that it took this long because when we got serious, we got it done in a reasonable amount of time.
So much was wasted and lost by just not acting earlier,” the guild leader added, with WGA West chief negotiator Ellen Stutzman by her side.
Now, the end is nigh. The nearly five-month Writers Guild strike will meet its official end at 12:01 a.m. PT, with the WGA leadership approving the tentative deal struck on Sunday with the AMPTP. “I would just say member power is what brought this deal in,” Stutzman said of the writers who held out as times got tougher — and the actors who joined them when 160,000-strong SAG-AFTRA went out on strike in mid-July for their first joint strike since 1960.
It’s been a wild half-year or so in Hollywood and the showbiz world, beginning with saber-rattling about a WGA strike and then the writers going on strike May 2.
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