The DGA (Director’s Guild of America) and the AMPTP (The Producers Association) have quickly come to a new contract agreement! The new deal includes:
The Directors Guild deal contains several points addressing how directors should be compensated for work in new media, including provisions that essentially double the rate now paid for Internet downloads of movies and TV shows, the union said.
It also sets new “residual” fees for the reuse of material in the form of advertising-supported online streaming and video clips, and requires studios to work with union directors on content produced specially for the Internet, the union said.
Both the directors and the producers seem to be thrilled with the new deal, and amazingly got the deal done in just 5 days of official negotiations. The focus now squarely goes back on the Producers and Writers negotiations.
So clearly the Producers are willing to deal on the issues of new media and residuals… so what’s the hold up with the writers negotiations? How soon will these two sides get back to the table? Will the Producers offered something similar to the writers? Will the writers take off their demands for control over reality TV and the right to sympathy strike?
The producers have finally gotten off their asses and extended an invitation to continue “informal” talks with the WGA. The WGA says they want some time to analyze the DGA deal and see if it makes sense to them or not, which is understandable. I just hope, either way, this gets settled soon.
I can see this ending disastrously for the writers union. at first I thought these side deals might add pressure to the studios but i can see it tearing the union apart.
the wga might collapse due to these side deals.
its all or nothing if you strike.
And just the other day the WGA wentt in for another one of those ‘side deals”- this one with production company Spyglass Entertainment (27 Dresses, some of Shamhammer’s earlier films, the Bruce/Evan Almighty films, a number of others)…so with the DGA/AMPTP agreement I see a resolve with the WGA ahead.
Just as long as the WGA gives up on the stupid stuff like the reality shows and such. It would be a shame if the Oscars got threatened because the WGA wants to unionize the scribes of Flava Of Love III.
The longer the WGA keeps up with their pettyness, the worse they’re going to look to the public. The producers obviously want to get deals done, seeing how they wrapped this one up quickly and quietly.
This may hurt what WGA is doing. Some people outside the industry who are casual observers and even some in the industry might think how could the DGA and producers reach a deal so fast while the WGA and producers are fighting and have been fighting for 11 weeks now.
I guess next up is negotiations with SAG. Wonder if that will go as smoothly as the negotiations did with DGA
I have it on very good authority that the DGA deal was struck in principal before Xmas.
The Writers are pissed.