Industry Practice desk · Aug 31, 2026
A spec is unpaid until a sale, a hire, or a paid option. The first published contract number is the WGA floor — Year 1 high-budget original, including treatment, starts at $173,215. Around that floor, BLS and Guild reports show what employed writers actually earn.
Covered theatrical work at a signatory. High budget is $5,000,000 and above.
A spec has no floor. These numbers apply after a signatory hires you.
Last reviewed Aug 31, 2026. Floors follow the live Guild schedule.
A spec can sell. Until a signatory buys it or hires you, the pages are yours and no Guild floor applies. An option can pay for time without being a purchase. Confirm whether the company is a signatory before treating any figure as scale.
The lowest fee a signatory may pay for a named step — original, rewrite, polish, story and teleplay, a staff week. A high-budget rewrite starts at $46,152 in Year 1. Quotes, profit participation, and residuals sit above that floor.
BLS May 2025 puts the Writers and Authors median at $76,910. WGA West counted 5,072 members reporting covered earnings in 2025, on $1.7 billion in total writer earnings. Both figures have limits; the section below names them.
Path
Writers search for a salary because that is how other jobs talk. Screenwriting pays in steps: unpaid pages, then a read, then maybe an option, then a covered assignment or a room. Residuals arrive after reuse.
01
Unpaid until a sale, a hire, or a paid option. You own the pages. Guild scale starts when a signatory hires you or buys the script.
02
A contest, fellowship, or manager who can put the script in a room that hires.
03
A company pays for time to shop the script. Often well below a purchase. Confirm whether the company is a signatory.
04 · Floor
A signatory hires you to write, rewrite, or polish. This is where the schedule of minimums becomes the floor.
05
Weekly staff minimums, plus script fees if you also write episodes. Residuals arrive later, on reuse.
Selling a spec and finding film writing work are different questions. The Submission Center holds current contest and fellowship windows. This desk holds the published floors once a signatory is in the picture, and the public earnings figures around those floors.
Published earnings
A floor is the legal minimum on a covered job. Working writers earn quotes, reuse, and weekly staff pay around that number. People writing on spec usually earn nothing until a sale. Two public datasets sit around the floor.
BLS median, all writers and authors
$76,910
May 2025 OEWS
Covered high-budget original floor
$173,215
Year 1 · 2026 MBA
WGA West members reporting earnings
5,072
2025 · down from nearly 7,000 in 2022
Total reported writer earnings
$1.7 billion
WGA West 2025 · residuals $535.5 million
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Median $76,910; mean $86,090; 47,940 wage-and-salary jobs. BLS groups screenwriters with novelists, copywriters, and other writers. It is wage-and-salary employment, not a screenwriter-only sample and not a count of people writing on spec. BLS occupation page.
WGA West 2025 financials, as reported by Deadline (5 August 2026). 5,072 members reported covered earnings in 2025, down 27% from nearly 7,000 in 2022. Total writer earnings $1.7 billion (down 1.3%). Residuals $535.5 million. Feature earnings $521 million, up 7.2%. Television jobs are down more than 33% since 2022; feature jobs are down about 14%, with 2,007 members reporting feature earnings. Guild figures are aggregates for members who reported covered earnings. They are not a typical-writer salary, and they omit writers who reported no covered earnings that year. Figures are current as of March 2026 and the Guild describes them as preliminary. Deadline report of the Guild audit.
Features
High budget is $5,000,000 and above. An original including treatment is $173,215 on that side and $92,268 below it. A rewrite is $46,152. A polish is $23,077.
$173,215
High budget · Year 1. Low budget: $92,268.
$46,152
About 27% of that original. High budget · Year 1.
$23,077
About 13% of that original. High budget · Year 1.
Episodes and rooms
Network prime time and Tier 1 SVOD Year 1 story-and-teleplay starts at $32,270 for a half hour and $47,460 for an hour. A pilot is 150% of that story-and-teleplay. Staff week-to-week starts at $6,024. The 2026 format fee is $20,000.
Network prime time or Tier 1 SVOD. A pilot is 150% of story-and-teleplay.
The format fee is $20,000. Staff is weekly; scripts are per episode.
Reuse
Writers reach for the publishing word. The Guild pays residuals — reuse payments that follow the writing credit. The worldwide theatrical run itself does not pay a residual; later reuse is what residuals cover. Streaming publishes three-year High-Budget SVOD totals for each MBA year. An hour on Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, or Hulu is $89,370 in Year 1. The same hour on Max or Peacock is $36,478. Later years live on the explorer.
The Guild administers residuals. The residuals term is the definition. This table compares Year 1. The explorer has Years 2–4.
Official three-year High-Budget SVOD totals, Year 1 of the 2026 MBA.
Interactive check
Pick a deal family and a writing step. The explorer shows the official number and the four-year schedule where the Guild published one. The same control lives on the WGA minimums explorer.
Every floor on this page is sourced from the official 2026 Schedule of Minimums or the Guild's 2026 MBA Contract Changes FAQ. Theatrical and television compensation come from the schedule. High-Budget SVOD three-year residual totals and the format fee come from the FAQ. Later MBA years are shown only when that table lists them.
The earnings figures are a different dataset. The BLS median is OEWS May 2025 for Writers and Authors. The Guild counts come from the WGA West 2025 financials as reported by Deadline. BLS groups screenwriters with novelists, copywriters, and other writers. It is wage-and-salary employment, not a screenwriter-only sample and not a count of people writing on spec. Guild figures are aggregates for members who reported covered earnings. They are not a typical-writer salary, and they omit writers who reported no covered earnings that year.
The glossary term for the agreement is 2026 WGA MBA. The workflow orientation is WGA-aware screenwriting workflows. Those pages name the contract. This desk publishes the Year 1 floors and the public earnings figures around them. A floor is not a salary is the shorter argument for how to use both.
How to use a Guild floor and the published earnings figures around it.
Read nextCurrent contest and fellowship windows while the spec has not sold.
Read nextWhat the agreement is, without the rate table.
Read nextLook up a published floor for the deal you have.
Open explorerKeep the drafts that earned the deal
Plot keeps the exact draft a notes pass or a delivery refers to. Start writing free. Export FDX when the office asks.
