The Wall Street Journal-20080118-Directors- Studios Reach a Deal
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Directors, Studios Reach a Deal
The Directors Guild of America reached a tentative three-year deal with the major Hollywood studios, adding to pressure on striking screenwriters to either accept a similar deal or prolong their 11-week strike, possibly for months.
The proposed deal between the directors' guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the studios, addresses many of the critical issues that have divided the Hollywood creative community and the major studios and broadcast networks. The deal announced yesterday includes provisions to compensate directors for the use and re-use of their work on the Internet -- both content created specifically for the Web and traditional programs and films that are streamed online or made available by the companies for download. Other, more routine issues, including wage increases, are also covered. The deal includes a so- called sunset provision that allows the two sides to revisit the new- media issues in three years.
The deal, which must pass muster with the DGA's board and the guild's 13,500 members, could spell the beginning of the end for the nearly three-month strike by the Writers Guild of America. Part of the studios' strategy, according to people close to the situation, was to quickly and publicly release the terms of a directors' guild contract so that striking writers could see exactly what had been agreed to. The studios hope writers will, in turn, put enough pressure on their guild leadership to quickly force an end to the strike -- perhaps in time to rescue part of the current television season and to prevent disruption of the Academy Awards in late February.
The writers' guild will review the directors' deal to determine whether something similar would be good enough for their own purposes. In an interview earlier this week, Writers Guild Executive Director David Young said a contract for the directors would create a "moment of truth" for his union as it seeks to retain the solidarity of its strike.
The entertainment industry has been holding its collective breath since formal negotiations between the directors and the producers began last Saturday after months of informal discussions meant to pave the way for a deal. The writers' guild has been solidly backed by its 12,500 members as the strike has dragged on, shutting down television production and producing increasing headaches in the feature-film sector.
But the WGA members' cohesion will be tested. In recent weeks, a group of screenwriters and some so-called showrunners -- TV writers who also produce their shows -- has grown antsy about the strike and has been holding meetings to discuss alternatives, according to two people familiar with this group's thinking. At least one of those informal meetings earlier this week included some WGA negotiating- committee members, according to another person familiar with the proceedings. At it, some writers urged the guild to examine the directors' agreement carefully to see if it is in the ballpark of what writers could accept, these people said.
The stakes are high. If the writers spurn the directors' terms, it is possible they will remain on strike at least through June, when the much larger Screen Actors Guild's contract also expires. SAG has thus far closely aligned itself with the writers' guild, while the directors' union has kept its distance from the other two major creative guilds.
In a statement, the WGA said the terms of the deal will be analyzed and the guild will "discuss our strategies for our own negotiations and contract goals and how they may be affected by such a [DGA] deal."
The 11-week strike has wounded the annual Hollywood awards season, which is typically framed around two big events: the Golden Globes in early January and the Academy Awards in late February. The threat of a writers' picket line outside the Globes' broadcast last weekend and the unwillingness of SAG members to cross those picket lines forced the normally highly rated, celebrity-filled telecast to be pared down to an hour-long "press conference" announcing the winners. The WGA has declined to grant a waiver for guild writers to work on the coming Oscars telecast.
The writers walked out Nov. 5, five days after their contract with the studios expired.
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Sam Schechner contributed to this article.
