From November 5, 2007, to February 12, 2008, all 12,000 film and television screenwriters of the American labor union Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), and West (WGAW) went on strike.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike primarily sought increased residual rates for DVD sales and jurisdiction over and residuals from new media. It was targeted at the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a trade association representing the interests of 397 American film and television producers. The most influential of these were eleven corporations: CBS (Les Moonves), MGM (Harry E. Sloan), NBCUniversal (Jeff Zucker), The Weinstein Company (Harvey and Bob Weinstein), Lionsgate (Jon Feltheimer), News Corporation (Peter Chernin), Paramount Pictures (Brad Grey), Liberty Media/Starz (Chris McGurk), Sony Pictures (Michael Lynton), The Walt Disney Company (Bob Iger), and Warner Bros. (Barry Meyer).
Negotiators for the striking writers reached a tentative agreement on February 8, 2008, and the boards of both guilds unanimously approved the deal on February 10, 2008. Striking writers voted on February 12, 2008, on whether to lift the restraining order, with 92.5% voting to end the strike. On February 26, the WGA announced that the contract had been ratified with a 93.6% approval among WGA members. The Writers Guild later requested a court order seeking that the agreement be honored and implemented.
The guilds were on strike for 14 weeks and 2 days (100 days). In contrast, the previous strike in 1988, the longest in the history of the Guild, lasted 21 weeks and 6 days (153 days) and cost the American entertainment industry an estimated $500 million. According to a National Public Radio (NPR) report filed on February 12, 2008, the strike cost the economy of Los Angeles an estimated $1.5 billion. A report from the UCLA Anderson School of Management put the loss at $380 million, while economist Jack Kyser put the loss at $2.1 billion. The Milken Institute estimated the losses at $2.1 billion ($20 million per day) and 38,000 jobs.
The big win for the Writers Guild was jurisdiction over new media, which was precedent-setting. Streamers would have to hire WGA writers on shows over certain budgets. Other than that, they received a new percentage payment on the distributor's gross for digital distribution based on the deal that the WGA made during the strike.
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