The Directors Guild of America is one step closer to sealing the deal on a new four-year contract with the major film and television studios after union’s National Board of Directors unanimously voted to recommend ratification to the membership this week.
The contract now goes to the full membership for approval. That vote is expected to take place before the end of June, as the guild’s current contract expires June 30.
Along with that announcement, DGA president Christopher Nolan revealed more details about the tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in a memo to members on Friday.
“We entered this negotiation with three main priorities: secure our Health Plan, protect jobs, and ensure that our members remain secure as AI continues to impact our industry. We succeeded in these areas and gained in many others,” Nolan’s letter reads, with the prolific director adding that he believes the agreement has “both appropriate and necessary to provide stability and potential for growth at a moment when the industry has been experiencing contraction.”
That, as expected, includes changes to the guild’s health and pension plans to address the negative effects of both rising healthcare costs and Hollywood unemployment rates. Much like the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the directors secured increases in employer contributions to the health plan as well as higher contribution caps to bolster the fund.
As previously reported, the DGA’s predicament was not nearly as dire, and the deal reflects that. Still, the guild touts a total 24.4% increase in employer contributions to the health plan over the term of the agreement.
The DGA also negotiated wages and residual increases that are similar to its sister unions.
However, there are multiple major differences to the DGA’s contract, particularly in addressing threats to employment, including artificial intelligence. The new bargaining agreement confirms “directorial authority” over footage generated by artificial intelligence to establish that it should be “treated like footage created with a camera or any other technology, and therefore remains under the Director’s control”.
Also, in addition to licensing and transparency provisions similar to those in the writers’ and actors’ contracts, the directors’ agreement also establishes an employer-funded “skills enhancement program” to teach interested members how to integrate evolving tech into their workflows.
One of the more interesting ways that the DGA sought to protect jobs for career directors was by establishing guidelines with the studios for hiring multi-hyphenates for a single project. The guild did not go into detail on how this new provision will work, but the letter to members explains that it seeks to limit “the number of episodes that can be directed by those who have no track record in directing and are already employed in other capacities on a scripted series.”
The intention, DGA sources tell Deadline, is not to shut out multi-hyphenates who have a serious desire to direct. Rather, it’s to ensure that career directors who are not multi-hyphenates still have a healthy pool of opportunity. We understand this was a particularly tough deal point to get over the finish line, but a provision of this sort was high priority for the guild during this cycle.
While the DGA can’t directly negotiate any sort of federal tax incentive, it did try to ensure that the studios have some skin in that game as well. Per the guild, the new contract includes a sideletter in which the studios commit to involving senior executives in the lobbying efforts for a federal production tax incentive. The AMPTP also agreed to issue a bulletin “explicitly prohibiting” studios and agents from excluding DGA members from directing opportunities outside the U.S. and Canada.
DGA sources say this had increasingly become an issue in recent years as more productions from U.S.-based companies moved abroad, which the guild argues violates federal labor law.
Among a host of other deal points, the new contract also establishes a new “Pilot Directed by” credit, which will appear as a separate card on every single episode of a television series.
“Our fight is far from over,” Nolan concluded in his memo on Friday. “Through continued advocacy, lobbying, organizing, and vigorous enforcement of our contracts, we will continue – as we have for 90 years – to advance our priorities, including in international jurisdiction, job protection, AI, benefits, and the long-term strength of our profession and our craft.”
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