The striking Writers' Guild of America has reached a tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which, if approved by the Guild's board on Sunday, could have writers back to work as early as Wednesday.  Showrunners (writer/producers) are returning to work on Monday and the WGA membership will vote on the contract on Tuesday.  The end of the strike could mean new episodes of popular TV series as early as April (though serial drama's like Fox's 24 might not air until the fall (or even early 2009).  While the Hollywood studios were able to stockpile some scripts and haven't been affected as much as TV producers, the end of the strike could mean that Warner Bros.' might be able to restart its JLA project in order to attempt to have a superhero 'tentpole' film for the summer of 2009 (see 'Warners Puts the Brakes on JLA'). 

If the strike ends on Monday, expect a number of major announcements from Hollywood as the studios attempt to fill out their very thin 2009 schedules.  The studios still face a number of problems in filling out their 2009 slates including the amount of time it can take to create the special effects that modern blockbusters (especially those of the superhero persuasion) require and a potential strike by the Screen Actors Guild in June.

The tentative WGA settlement closely mirrors an earlier agreement between the Directors' Guild of America and the AMPTP.  Some writers are still unhappy with one provision of the agreement which allows the studios a 17-24 day window to stream shows on advertising supported Websites without compensating writers, but like the directors, writers will receive a fixed residual payment of $1,200 a year for one-hour shows streamed online for the first two years of the contract, though in the third year of the three-year deal writers will receive 2% of the gross revenue received by the producers.

Even if the strike ends soon, it will take a while to sort out all of its effects.  The TV pilot season was one of the strike's first casualties, which means that there will likely be a dearth of new TV offerings in the fall.  Some of the wretched reality programming such as the execrable American Gladiators appear to have caught on enough to spell the end of the scripted series they replaced (in the case of AG, the casualty was Chuck, a potentially interesting offering that never had a chance to develop).  On the other hand the lack of a pilot season should allow some series with low ratings such as the CW's Reaper to get another chance in the fall.