The Floor Is Set: WGA Ratified, SAG Talks Begin Today

The WGA ratified on April 24 with 90.38% yes. That number matters. When 90% of the workforce votes yes on a deal, they are not accepting terms they are unsure about — they are ratifying terms that, in the language of labor negotiation, represent what a studio can afford to give without destroying the business model. The deal runs May 2026 to May 2030. It includes AI training licensing requirements — the first formal recognition in a major Hollywood contract that AI companies using WGA-covered material owe writers something — healthcare restructuring, and streaming residuals adjusted upward from the 2023 deal.

Today, SAG-AFTRA and the major studios begin their own talks. A media blackout is in effect on both sides, which means the public record from here until an agreement or a breakdown is going to be sparse. What we know going in:

The WGA deal is the floor. Not metaphorically — literally. The studios have already agreed to provisions on AI training, digital replication of writers, and streaming residuals in writing. Those provisions are public. SAG negotiators go into today's talks knowing what the studios agreed to pay writers, and studios go in knowing that SAG knows. That knowledge changes the opening positions.

But SAG is negotiating on harder terrain. The WGA deal's AI provisions are primarily about training data and script generation — writers' work used to train AI systems, and protections against AI-generated scripts displacing human writers. These are significant provisions. They are also narrower than what SAG is facing.

SAG's core AI problem is the digital replica. The WGA's core AI problem is the training set. They are adjacent concerns — both are about who owns the data of what a human creator does — but the digital replica problem is more visible, more visceral, and has been more publicly contested. Jennifer Tilly put her name on it last year, which is how we got the shorthand. What the Tilly Tax actually requires: studios must pay actors for the use of their digital likeness in AI-generated content, at rates comparable to a day rate for a comparable on-camera performance. That provision is what SAG is trying to get into a ratified contract.

The studios' counter-position, which has not changed materially since 2023, is that they want broad rights to capture actor likenesses during productions and use them in future AI-generated content with narrow, time-limited consent requirements. The gap between those positions — between "pay for every use, rate-carded" and "consent once, use broadly" — is where contracts either get made or strikes happen.

The DGA begins its own negotiations May 11. That timeline puts SAG in the middle of a three-front labor negotiation period, which is where the studios have historically preferred to operate: multiple guilds in play simultaneously, each one watching the others' settlements.

What happens from here is not visible. The media blackout is a genuine blackout — not a strategy of appearing quiet while conducting back-channel negotiations, though that may be happening. The public record will not resume until someone breaks the silence or a deal is announced.

What is visible is what the next few weeks will not contain: a quick deal. The WGA took months after their strike authorization. SAG negotiated for the better part of 2023 and 2024 before ratifying their last agreement. The floor is set. The distance to the ceiling is unknown. Today is the first day of finding out.

Sources: LA Times — Writers Guild members ratify new contract with studios, April 24, 2026 (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2026-04-24/writers-guild-members-ratify-new-contract-with-studios). Offworld News AI — The Tilly Tax and What It Costs to Be an Actor (https://offworldnews.ai/the-tilly-tax-and-what-it-costs-to-be-an-actor/). WGA Minimum Basic Agreement 2026 (https://www.wga.org/contracts/contracts/mba).