#DGA National Board Approves Tentative Deal With Studios, Streamers

The Directors Guild of America’s national board has approved the tentative deal top negotiators reached with studios and streamers on June 3.

The group, whose members include Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg, met on Tuesday prior to the broader membership getting full details of the pact on Wednesday.

“We set out to negotiate a contract that would build for the future,” DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter said. “Our industry is rapidly changing and expanding, and this agreement is what we need to adapt to those changes, break new ground and protect the DGA’s 19,000 directors and directorial team members today, and in the years to come.”

The union reached its tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents top entertainment companies in collective bargaining, close to midnight on Saturday after a full day of negotiations. The union has revealed a few characteristics of the agreement, including that it raises minimum rates by 5 percent in the first year of the contract, 4 percent in the second year and 3.5 percent in the third year. The union stated that both parties agreed to a new foreign residuals payment structure that will result in a “substantial increase in the residuals for dramatic programs made for SVOD” (the largest streamers will pay 76 percent more in foreign residuals), compensation for “soft prep” time for feature directors and more “creative rights” in postproduction for episodic directors.

The agreement also broached artificial intelligence, though details about how have been vague so far. The parties agreed that “AI is not a person and that generative AI cannot replace the duties performed by members,” with no mention made of whether members’ work can be used to train A.I. programs.

The DGA also secured some safety language in the deal that mirrors a bill the union has already been supporting. The deal, like SB 735, which is currently in the California State Assembly and has a good shot of reaching the governor’s desk, would create a pilot program instituting safety supervisors on certain sets and amplify safety training for DGA members. (The agreement also would ban live ammunition on set, which the bill also does in most cases.)

Members still have to vote to ratify the tentative deal.

The union began negotiations on May 10 and ended them several days before performers’ union SAG-AFTRA was set to begin their own with the AMPTP. The DGA’s national executive director Russell Hollander led the negotiations for the union, while AMPTP president Carol Lombardini headed up talks for the AMPTP.