Christopher Nolan said he wasn’t interested in a five-year agreement with the studios and streamers in this year’s negotiations, but looks like the Directors Guild of America boss is willing to go with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA flow for a four-year pact.
After just under a month of talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the DGA tonight revealed they have a tentative deal. Set to go to a vote before guild’s board and then the DGA’s nearly 20,000 members, the agreement extends the contract from a three-year span to four-years — just like the WGA and the actors’ union signed on for after their own bargaining earlier this year.
“The DGA has reached a Tentative Agreement with the AMPTP on a new four-year collective bargaining agreement,” the helmers’ group said in a statement online Tuesday almost three weeks before the current contract expires on June 30. “The Guild’s National Board will meet to review the agreement, after which details will be released to the full membership for ratification. As is our longstanding practice, details of the agreement will not be released until the Board has completed its review.”
The studios also released a statement.
“The AMPTP is pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with the DGA,” the studio and streamers organization said Tuesday. “We appreciate the hard work and commitment of our guild partners in achieving a fair deal that helps advance a stable and successful entertainment industry.”
The DGA has historically been the most amenable of the three above-the-line unions and yet, funnily enough, had a much longer bargaining cycle than the WGA, who is usually the bullish one.
Deadline understands that the DGA’s priorities differed quite meaningfully from its sister unions’ goals this go-around. Both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, but particularly the latter, were dealing with near-insolvent health and pension funds that needed major cash infusions ASAP.
The same elixir of plummeting employment and rising healthcare costs has also plagued the directors, though not to the same degree.
Details on the deal have not yet been released, though we hear that the DGA was particularly focused on employment. The full deal is expected once rank-and-file members ratify the agreement.
