WGA Expects to Reach More Production Deals
By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, 1/8/2008 9:01:00 AM
The Writers Guild of America expects recent agreements with United Artists and Worldwide Pants to encourage other companies to craft similar deals with the union.
In a letter to members, the West and East coast chapter presidents lauded the deals as good news to open 2008, but the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers dismissed the agreements with companies controlled by performers Tom Cruise and David Letterman as “one-off” deals that do nothing to bring the WGA closer to an industry-wide agreement.
The UA agreement is similar to the one reached in December by Worldwide Pants, according to the union. The WGA has stated that the strike is about compensation for new media, and the Worldwide Pants agreement sets a compensation rate of 2 to 2.5% of receipts from content used for Internet and mobile distribution to be paid to writers. A writer’s initial compensation will be for the initial program air date, plus three days use thereafter on new media platforms, according to the contract. The newly negotiated compensation would begin to accrue after that.
“These interim deals are sideshows and mean only that some writers will be employed at the same time other writers will be picketing. In the end, until the people in charge at WGA decide to focus on the main event rather than these sideshows, the economic harm being caused by the strike will continue,” the AMPTP said in a prepared statement.
