The leaderships of the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA have agreed to a one-year extension of their current contract with the AMPTP. In other words, instead of hammering out a new three-year contract before the June 30 deadline, the actors and producers have made a one-year deal which makes minor improvements to the contract, thereby assuring there will be no actors' strike, at least not now. They can then address the matter of the next long-term contract at a more leisurely pace. (This has to be approved by the membership of both unions but easy passage is expected.)
So the Writers Guild is now up at bat. Our contract expires May 2 and if you're wondering why the actors negotiated ahead of us…well, it seems to have something to do with us announcing that we will fight for a larger share of DVD revenues. The actors want that too, of course, but do not seem to have the necessary militancy to make it a strike issue this time out. The theory is that they made their quickie deal so they would not get swept up in any WGA-AMPTP war that erupts over DVD loot. If we make gains in that area, the actors can demand and probably achieve the same thing next year…but of course, they've also made it somewhat more difficult for us to make gains in that area. The producers would have been more frightened of a writers' strike on the matter if there was a chance it could quickly escalate into a writers' and actors' strike.
As I wrote last month in this posting, the WGA is already in a bit of disarray over a one-two punch of scandals involving its officers, and more heads may roll. I have no idea if we can pull together in time to present a unified position. We could wind up folding on this issue or we could find ourselves in a long, quagmire-style strike that will cripple Hollywood as the WGA strike of '88 did. It would be incredibly self-destructive of the producers to let the latter occur, but it was in 1988, as well. That year, the producers sadly underestimated WGA resolve and gave us a lowball offer, figuring we'd either grab it or that a strike would collapse quickly. Neither happened, and it took them months to agree among themselves to give us the kind of offer they should have given us in the first place.
One scenario that I suspect will not happen this time is a one-year extension like the actors just negotiated. Their contract now expires June 30, 2005. The current Directors Guild contract expires the next day. I don't think the producers want to extend the WGA to May 2, 2005, thereby positioning the three "above-the-line" guilds for simultaneous negotiations and (perhaps) strikes. The DGA traditionally does not strike but if the other two guilds were walking the picket lines over some issue when the directors' contract expired, there'd be no reason for them not to join in since there'd be nothing for them to direct. That would completely shut down the industry, which is why they will never allow even the vague possibility it could occur.
In other guild-type news, the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild may be negotiating a truce in a long-running battle over possessory credits on movies. That's when the director gets a credit that suggests he is somehow the sole creator of the movie…"A Film by James Cameron" or "George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead." Writers have long held that such credits, or at least the automatic awarding of such credits, belittle the contributions of others on a film. Directors have demanded them as their inalienable right. (If you'd like to read more about the two positions, this article covers some of the talking points for both views.) At one point, the WGA seemed to be threatening a strike and/or lawsuit over the matter but backed down on the condition that the two guilds would meet and try to hammer out some workable compromise. The DGA has now proposed, and the WGA seems receptive to a new plan that would slightly limit the practice. The proposal would generally ban such a credit on a director's first movie, though it could be awarded under certain circumstances. It would also slightly restrict the usage of such credits in some advertising.
The suggested "compromise" seems pretty slim to me. In fact, it sounds like something the directors might have enacted for their own benefit. Possessory credits have become so commonplace that established directors have complained they are no longer meaningful; not when a kid fresh out of film school is getting it on his first movie. At the same time, I don't sense that this is currently a big issue within the WGA; not to the extent that our members are prepared to go to war over it. So I suspect most of them will act like the DGA has met them halfway on the matter, and we'll wait to fight this battle another day.