The Writers Guild of America (WGA) finally ratified a new three-year contract with Hollywood Studios. As per the Guild, 99% of the WBA members voted unanimously in favor of the renewed Minimum Basic Agreement. The result follows a week-long voting process by the WGA West and WGA East members.
Roughly 8,435 members voted in favor of the deal, against 90 who rejected the offer. The new contract included most of the demands of the writers, including higher base pay, minimum staffing requirements, and, importantly, that artificial intelligence (AI) will not hamper the writer’s credibility or payments.
The five-month-long strike came to a happy ending after they reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on September 24. Writers returned to work on September 25 itself. The new agreement is effective from September 25, 2023, up to May 1, 2026. Meanwhile, the Screen Actors Guild’s strike is still ongoing, as their demands haven’t been met yet.
Media Companies Affected by the WGA Strike
Major entertainment houses that were affected by the WGA strike included Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Paramount Global (NYSE:PARA), Sony (NYSE:SONY), Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA), and Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD), among others. The revised pay under the renewed contract is expected to increase the expenses of these media companies. Even so, the companies are happy that the strike has ended and work has resumed normalcy.
With this background in mind, let us see how each of these stocks performs on the TipRanks Stock Comparison tool.
From the comparison results, we can see that currently, both Amazon.com and Warner Bros. Discovery earn a Strong Buy consensus rating on TipRanks. Meanwhile, WBD stock boasts a TipRanks’ Smart Score of nine and has the highest upside potential (69.2%) to its average target price.
