Writers Guild Releases Tentative Agreement With AMPTP, Including $280 Million in Studio Health Plan Contributions

The Writers Guild of America has released its memorandum of agreement for a four-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which will now go to members for ratification.

“Our most significant accomplishment was restoring our health plan to a sustainable path after facing severe pressure from industry contraction and runaway healthcare cost inflation,” guild leadership said in a memo to members. “The companies agreed to substantially improved health contributions — an increase of 3.25% in the health contribution rate upon ratification, with the contribution rate reaching 16.75% by the second year of the contract, in addition to long-overdue increases to health contribution caps.”

Since the 2023 writers’ strikes, writer contributions to the WGA health plan had drastically decreased as the number of film and television projects greenlit by studios was curtailed, resulting in fewer writers employed. Meanwhile, health plan costs continue to increase as they have across all of American healthcare, resulting in a two-year loss of $122 million from the health plan’s reserves.

With the new commitments from the AMPTP, the WGA estimates that studio contributions to the health plan will reach a contract cycle record $280 million. In total, the health plan will receive an infusion of $321 million to maintain solvency that also includes $25 million and 0.25% annual contributions transferred from the guild’s over-funded Parental Leave fund.

By comparison, the 2017 WGA/AMPTP bargaining agreement, which was the last time that studio contributions to the plan were increased, were projected to add $66 million in employer-side contributions.

But that increase in funding will also come with cuts in benefits for health plan members and, for the first time, a monthly premium of at least $75 for single participants and up to $200 for members with multiple dependents. Deductibles for single and family plans will increase from $400 and $1,200 to $500 and $1,500, respectively while the out-of-pocket maximum for in-network service increases from $1,000 to $2,500, with a 3% annual increase.

In addition, the earnings threshold required to qualify for the health plan will increase in July 2027 from $46,759 to $53,773. This new threshold is 110% of the one-hour network primetime story and teleplay minimum and will continue to increase with MBA minimums.

Beyond the health plan, the WGA touted minimum increases totaling 10.5% over the term of the contract, with a higher increase for Comedy-Variety writers in the first year of the contract. Increases in high budget streaming residuals were negotiated as well as increases to the bonus structure for high-performing films and TV shows on streaming that was established to end the 2023 strike.

“For screenwriters, we established a new minimum for “page-one” rewrites, which is significantly higher than the standard rewrite fee. We expanded the number of writers covered by the guaranteed second step provision, and required studios to notify producers that only our employers may request work from the writer or receive direct delivery of the script,” the memo read.

As for artificial intelligence protections, the guild says it has expanded its access to information on how studios are integrating AI and clauses requiring studios to meet with the WGA if it plans to license writers’ work to train commercially available generative AI systems, during which the WGA would be able to negotiate compensation for writers.

Individuals with knowledge of the talks said that the AMPTP did not want to establish any compensation for AI licensing agreements during this contract cycle as no studios were imminently launching such partnerships. The recent dissolution of the partnership between Disney and OpenAI with the latter’s shutdown of its video generating software Sora played a factor in the talks.

If ratified, the WGA contract would break a three-year contract cycle for Hollywood labor that has dated back to the 1940s. Studios have been pushing for a longer contract cycle this year with the argument that such contracts would help give them more stability to greenlight more projects.

But longer contract cycles at a time of rapidly developing AI and ongoing industry contraction and consolidation would require significant concessions from the studios for the unions to agree, and the record offer for the health plan was one that the AMPTP was willing to make. With the four-year contract secured with WGA, insiders with knowledge of talks tell TheWrap that the AMPTP is expected to propose four-year cycles to SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America, though what they will offer in exchange remains under wraps.

Negotiations between the WGA and AMPTP only lasted three weeks before a deal was reached, a drastic shift from past contract cycles in which the two sides came to an impasse, digging their heels in and either reaching a deal at the 11th hour, as was the case in 2017, or going on strike, as was the case in 2023.

But insiders with knowledge of the talks say that in 2026, the two sides expressed interest in getting a deal done quickly as the AMPTP offered sizable contribution increases to the health plan with its first contract proposal including changes to the caps on contributions from certain film and TV projects that hadn’t changed in decades.

The AMPTP will next resume talks with SAG-AFTRA on April 27, having paused after five weeks of talks in February and March to allow negotiations with the WGA to begin. WGA West, meanwhile, still has its own contract dispute with its staffers union, which has been on strike since February.

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