A WGA DEAL IS REACHED

John Campea 8 Comments

An official announcement could still be a few days away, but I’ve been told by someone inside the WGA and Producers negotiations that the two sides have indeed come to an agreement in principle and are each sending the deal back to their respective bodies to be voted on and ratified.

How long that process takes is something I just don’t know, but I can’t imagine it would be more than a couple of days barring any complications (and this whole stupid affair has been filled with complications).

I’ve said for a while now that if the Producers are able to come to a quick agreement with the Director’s Guild, and if the Writer’s came to their senses and took Reality TV jurisdiction off the table, that a deal would be struck quickly. Looks like it may been even quicker than I thought. For all I know a press release may come out today, so keep your eyes open.

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8 thoughts on “A WGA DEAL IS REACHED”

  2. Sounds like they’re not out of the woods yet. Over at Nikki Finke’s site she’s posted the following:

    I’m told that Patric Verrone, Dave Young and John Bowman — the WGA leadership involved in Friday’s breakthrough session of the writer-mogul talks with Peter Chernin and Bob Iger — are recommending the deal hashed out Friday and briefed the guild’s negotiating committee today. There is also a regularly scheduled WGA board meeting today, and the leadership may brief the board about the deal but that’s not certain. I hear no one at the top of the guild will be asked to vote on the deal today. That can’t happen until the deal is drafted, and there’s the rub. I’m told that if something, or someone, gets tricky with the language or terms, then writing down what was agreed to becomes a major haggle. “Everything needs to be in writing. So there’s still a possibility that this thing could get fucked,” an insider explains to me. “The DGA has five months to put its shit in writing but the WGA has to get it all in writing before the strike can be called off. There has to be a draft and that has to be approved.”

    Without problems, the draft could be done by week’s end, maybe longer. But I hear various people from inside and outside the union are pressuring the WGA to schedule the vote as soon as possible. Here’s why: once both the WGA negotiating committee and the WGA board approve the deal, then the guild leaders would call off the strike immediately. I’m told that was an integral part of the agreement because the moguls didn’t want to wait for the membership at large to weigh in on the deal. Among those pressing for this were Bob Iger, who for obvious reasons wants the picket lines to come down so Hollywood can feel free to attend ABC’s Academy Awards.

    But there are genuine concerns that the negotiating committee and the board may not approve the deal, even though Verrone, Young and Bowman are behind it. (Though the votes do not have to be unanimous.) There are also genuine concerns that the WGA membership may not approve the deal — like what happened during the 1960 strike.

  5. I heard from a Directors Guild honcho at Sundance that the DGA agreement would quickly become the template for an end to the writers’ strike, since it covered many of the same concerns. I can’t believe it’s taken more than two weeks to even move this far.

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