Hollywood directors are signing contracts as writers continue to strike
Union film and television directors on Friday approved a new three-year contract with Hollywood studios, with 87 percent voting in favour.
The Directors Guild of America, which has 16,321 eligible voters, announced the results, saying there was a record turnout and that the contract included “wage gains, global streaming residuals, safety, diversity and creative rights.”
The ratification formally averts the doomsday scenario of three major Hollywood unions striking simultaneously. More than 11,000 screenwriters lined up for eight weeks, bringing many productions to a halt. No talks are scheduled between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of studios. The writers and studios left the negotiating table very far apart on the big issues on May 1.
The contract between studios and SAG-AFTRA, the guild that represents some 160,000 actors, expires next Friday. The alliance and the actors’ union started negotiations on a new contract on June 7. It’s unclear how those talks are going; the two sides agreed to a media blackout. The actors voted to approve a strike before negotiations began. (About 65,000 members voted, or 48 percent of eligible voters, 98 percent of whom supported a strike.)
“The DGA was not negotiating in a vacuum,” Lesli Linka Glatter, the guild’s president, said in a statement. “We stand united with writers, actors and all crew members in our collective fight to move our industry forward.”
Some of the directors’ priorities echoed those of actors and writers, including wages, gushing waste streams, and concerns about artificial intelligence. Writers Guild leaders had said the studios offered little more than “annual meetings to talk” about artificial intelligence, and refused to negotiate guardrails. The Directors Guild said it had received a “groundbreaking agreement confirming that AI is not a person and generative AI cannot replace members’ duties.”
However, some of the writers’ requirements are more complex than those of the directors. Writers Guild leaders have described their dispute in urgent terms, calling this moment “existential” and saying the studios “apparently intend to continue their efforts to destroy the writing profession.”
Writers Guild leaders called the deal studios made with directors part of a “playbook” to “divide and conquer,” and vowed to fight on. Wednesday saw a “WGA Strong” rally in downtown Los Angeles an estimated 5,000 peopleincluding members of SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild and other entertainment associations.