Order has been restored to the Hollywood food chain. Now we'll see if the writers and actors follow the directors' lead.
After just five days of negotiations, the Directors Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers announced Thursday that they have hammered out a new contract.
Like the Screen Actors Guild, the directors' current agreement doesn't expire until June 30, but the filmmakers union has traditionally tried to get its ducks in a row as early as possible when it comes to dealing with the studios.
And not only were the directors were able to negotiate themselves a bigger slice of the new-media pie than was initially offered to the Writers Guild of America last summer, but their guild has been given jurisdiction over content produced specifically for the Internet. (Lower budget fare, content that cost less than $500,000 to produce, is exempt.)
"Two words describe this agreement—groundbreaking and substantial,” Gil Cates, the DGA's negotiation point man (and producer of the imperiled Academy Awards telecast), said in a statement. "The gains in this contract for directors and their teams are extraordinary—and there are no rollbacks of any kind.”
DGA leaders had said that they were seeking a specific coup from the AMPTP in exchange for their willingness to enter talks this early in the game. (Although with the disastrous Golden Globes news conference behind us and the possibly starless Oscars ahead, the game sure feels ages-old by now.)
In addition to handing over jurisdiction, the alliance also agreed to double directors' residuals for downloads of TV shows, to 0.7 percent (7 cents per download), and upped the ante by 80 percent, to 0.65 percent per purchase, for movies.
As for ad-supported content, such as the prime-time shows that stream on network Websites, producers will dole out fixed residuals at a rate of three percent for every six-month period, or about $600, after a 17-day free promotional trial (24 days for a show in its first season).
Nearly 13,400 directors are covered by the deal.
Legal analysts are saying the terms arrived at definitely show traces of the writers' strike, but that it by no means meets their exacting qualifications and it's unlikely the scribes will be able to improve on the directors' agreement.
Still, the relative quickness and ease with which the directors seemingly saw eye to eye with the studios means the clock is now ticking on the WGA to reassess what all the fighting is for.
It's mainly the terms surrounding new-media residuals—royalties collected from Internet-specific content, pay downloads and ad-supported streaming via the Internet, cell phones and other digital devices—that has been sticking in the writers' collective craw for months.
It remains to be seen whether the DGA's new deal will serve as a sufficient template for the WGA, which has been on strike since Nov. 5, or if the union continues to insist upon its original demands. If WGA leaders continue to hold out, they could face increased hostility from the scribes themselves, many of whom have been urging the negotiators to use the directors' deal to script their own happy ending.
The WGA said in a statement Thursday that the DGA's deal "will be carefully analyzed and evaluated" by the union's powers that be.
"We will work with the full membership of both guilds to discuss our strategies for our own negotiations and contract goals and how they may be affected by such a deal."
If the striking scribes cut a deal, it will also pretty much guarantee that the industry avoids an even costlier and more detrimental development—an actors' strike spurred both by their own demands and by the Screen Actors Guild continued support of its creative brethren over at the WGA.
Both the WGA and SAG have said that they are not bound by any decisions the directors make.
"We are interested in thoroughly reviewing and carefully analyzing the terms of the DGA’s tentative agreement with the AMPTP," read SAG's statement in response to the deal."Thus far, all we have is a press release. We look forward to seeing more specifics.
"Now is the time for the AMPTP to return to the bargaining table they left, and negotiate a new deal with the WGA that provides for fair compensation for writers."
George Clooney, a possible Oscar nominee for Michael Clayton and one of the many SAG members who wouldn't have crossed a picket line even if the Globes had gone on as scheduled, took the DGA's news as a hopeful sign of things to come.
"I'm very pleased with the new agreement adn I hope it helps speed up the negotiations with the WGA," the unofficial ambassador of everything said in a statement.
But although it might seem as if these negotiations went off without a hitch, with back-slapping all around, the DGA said that there's no such thing as a bargain that isn't hard these days.
"This was a very difficult negotiation that required real give and take on both sides,” said DGA president Michael Apted. “Nonetheless, we managed to produce an agreement that enshrines the two fundamental principles we regard as absolutely crucial to any employment and compensation agreement in this digital age:
"First, jurisdiction is essential. Without secure jurisdiction over new-media production—both derivative and original—compensation formulas are meaningless. Second, the Internet is not free. We must receive fair compensation for the use and reuse of our work on the Internet, whether it was originally created for other media platforms or expressly for online distribution.”
On this high note, the AMPTP has invited the WGA to "engage with us in a series of informal discussions similar to the productive process that led us to a deal with the DGA to determine whether there is a reasonable basis for returning to formal bargaining.
"We look forward to these discussions, and to the day when our entire industry gets back to work."
In a joint statement, executives from eight major studios said they hoped that the end of this "extremely difficult period for our industry" is in sight.
(Originally published Jan. 17, 2008 at 3:26 p.m. PT)