UPDATE 1-Hollywood engine on idle as strike winds down

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By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Labor peace returned to Hollywood on Monday, but the town's production machine remained at a low idle ahead of a vote by striking film and TV writers on whether to return to work after a three-month clash with major studios.

A proposed contract settlement was endorsed on Sunday by the governing bodies of the Writers Guild of America, which also pulled the plug on further picketing scheduled this week.

But the walkout remained in effect pending a vote set for Tuesday by union rank and file on whether to lift the strike.

Membership meetings are slated for New York and Los Angeles where writers can cast their ballots in person or by proxy, and they are expected to support an immediate back-to-work order.

Formal approval of the contract, which hinged on new payments to writers for work distributed over the Internet, is being conducted through a lengthier ratification process that normally takes up to two weeks.

For the time being, writers were still barred from working on projects that were in development for struck companies before 10,500 WGA members walked off the job on Nov. 5.

Even when the walkout officially ends, the potential for further labor strife hangs over Hollywood. The Screen Actors Guild, which represents some 120,000 film and TV performers, sees its contract with the studios come up for renewal in June, and SAG leaders have vowed to be aggressive in labor talks.

One key group of Hollywood workers who did return to their jobs on Monday were television "show-runners" on dozens of scripted prime-time dramas and comedies forced out of production by the work stoppage.

They are permitted to perform producing duties but remain precluded for now from writing or polishing scripts.

Even if full writing staffs return as expected on Wednesday, thousands of TV production workers idled during the strike -- from set designers and hairstylists to directors and camera operators -- will remain sidelined for weeks while scripts are prepared.

"Crews won't be called back until there is something ready to shoot," one studio insider told Reuters. He said planning and scheduling would be producers' first order of business.

PENCILS UP

On the film side, only production companies that signed "interim agreements" with the WGA during the strike, such as Lionsgate Entertainment, the Weinstein Co. and Tom Cruise's United Artists, were allowed to have writers at work.

But that has not kept countless freelance scribes from plugging away at their computer keyboards. Even before the tentative pact, film writers were presumably toiling over "spec" scripts -- unsolicited screenplays to shop around, or "pitch," to studios once the strike is officially over.