By DPA
Los Angeles : Hollywood directors reached a new three-year pay deal with the main producer’s organisation, upping pressure on the striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) to end its 11-week strike that has disrupted film and TV production.
Both writers and directors have been demanding a greater share of income from new media, but the directors were not on strike.
The agreement between The Directors Guild of America (DGA) and Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) was announced by the directors’ guild after just six days of negotiations, which produced compromise on the key points of contention that had divided producers and writers.
Under the terms of the deal, directors will be granted rights for residual payments for content that is downloaded or streamed over the Internet.
The writers’ guild expressed hope that the producers-directors agreement would move forward their own efforts and called on the producers to return to the negotiating table.
“Now that those negotiations are completed, the AMPTP must return to the process of bargaining with the WGA,” the union said in a statement.
“We hope that the DGA’s tentative agreement will be a step forward in our effort to negotiate an agreement that is in the best interests of all writers.”
The group said they would analyse the terms of the deal and discuss with members the next step in negotiations.
Gil Cates, chair of the directors’ negotiations committee, called the deal “groundbreaking and substantial”.
“The gains in this contract for directors and their teams are extraordinary,” he said.
The writers’ guild launched talks with the producers on July 16 last year, and has been on strike since Nov 5. The producers have refused to negotiate with the writers since Dec 7, when they demanded that the WGA remove their claim to jurisdiction over reality TV and animation productions and the right to stage sympathy strikes.
The strike has interrupted late-night talk shows and the production of new television shows, and reduced one of the season’s premier events, the Golden Globes awards ceremony, to a press conference because actors refused to cross the picket line.
A similar fate could befall the industry’s flagship Oscar awards ceremony scheduled in late February.
The heads of all the major studios signed the statement put out by the producers’ organisation after the deal.
“Our industry’s creative talent will now participate financially in every emerging area of new media,” the producers said.
“The agreement demonstrates beyond any doubt that our industry’s producers are willing and able to work with the creators of entertainment content to establish fair and flexible rules for this fast-changing marketplace.”