Hollywood directors reach deal with studios, writers’ strike continues

The union representing thousands of movie and television directors reached an agreement with Hollywood studios on a three-year contract early Sunday morning. The deal ensures labour peace with directors as the writers’ strike enters its sixth week.

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) said it had made “unprecedented gains,” including improvements in wages and streaming residuals (a type of royalty), as well as guardrails around artificial intelligence.

Jon Avnet, the chair of the DGA.’s negotiating committee said, “We have concluded a truly historic deal.” “It provides significant improvements for every director, assistant director, unit production manager, associate director and stage manager in our guild, ” Avnet said.

The DGA's board will consider whether to approve the deal on Tuesday before it goes to members for ratification. If approved, it could offer a blueprint for the striking writers and upcoming talks between studios and SAG-AFTRA, the union representing Hollywood actors.

Meanwhile, Writers Guild of America (WGA) negotiator Chris Keyser said that this strategy would not work this time. It may be noted that during the last WGA strike in 2007 and 2008, a studio deal with the DGA prompted writers to head back to the bargaining table.

"Any deal that puts this town back to work runs straight through the WGA, and there is no way around that," Keyser said 

The WGA has been on strike since May 2, shutting down several TV and film productions, and has no new talks scheduled with the studios.

AI has emerged as a major concern of writers and actors, who see their jobs as especially vulnerable to the new technology.