DGA lock down deal; WGA dispute rumbles on

The US directors’ guild and Hollywood studios have hammered out an agreement that would gives the DGA membership a slice of new media revenues and the studios’s body, the AMPTP, has called for informal talks to resume with the writer’s guild, the WGA.

The DGA will offer its members a deal that includes increased residuals and a new formula for calculating residuals for downloads and streamed content – one of the key sticking points in the writers’ strike.

The AMPTP then issued a statement signed by the heads of all of the major studios calling for informal discussions to recommence with the WGA. It said: "Today, we invite the Writers Guild of America 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."

The WGA said it would analyse the terms of the DGA deal and countered: "For over a month, we have been urging the conglomerates to return to the table and bargain in good faith. They have chosen to negotiate with the DGA instead. Now that those negotiations are completed, the AMPTP must return to the process of bargaining with the WGA."