Members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) will gather this afternoon in New York and later in Los Angeles to vote on a tentative agreement of its negotiators with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP).

Since the strike began, the WGA stated several times that they would only sign an agreement that gives TV and film writers a percentage of the residuals from DVD sales and Internet downloads of programs, a market that has been raking in billions of dollars and that producers, studio heads and actors already receive.

It is an agreement that protects a future in which the Internet becomes the primary means of both content creation and delivery. It creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, "When they get paid, we get paid." - wrote Michael Winship, President of Writers Guild of America - East Coast and Patric M. Verrone, President of Writers Guild of America - West Coast in a joint letter to WGA members.

If members agree with the terms of the deal, it is further to be evaluated by the Board on Sunday. This means that if all goes well, the movie industry could be back to work as soon as Monday. A draft of the three-year deal was reached a few days back, but it took a few more days for lawyers from both sides to pen the actual contract, which was done Friday. Around 300 strike captains have taken a look at the draft the same day, with most of them considering the deal fair with just a few hardliners arguing that more could be achieved.

Rumors of the deal have been swirling since last weekend, while Oscar organizers said they were running out of time in the search for a deal to avoid the ceremony from being affected by the strike. Last month’s Golden Globes was reduced to a press conference after the A-list nominees refused to cross the picket line and attend the glittering ceremony.

The producers of Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony have secured the benevolence and participation of the striking Writers Guild, who agreed a week ago to allow its members to work on the show. An interim agreement was reached between striking film and television writers and the producers of the Feb. 10 Grammy Awards show that allowed the program to be written by members of the Writers Guild.

This year’s 80th edition of the Academy Awards is due to take place on February 24. Fears of the prestigious awards' cancellation due to the strke have now apparently subsided. The Oscars were postponed only three times in the Academy history: first was in 1938 due to floods, than in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and in 1981 before the assassination attempt on President Reagan.

The WGA strike began at one minute after midnight on Nov. 5, marking the first strike in 20 years, after representatives for the 12,000 members of the WGA failed to reach an agreement with TV and film producers on a new contract.