The Directors Guild of America has set the start date of its upcoming TV/Theatrical contract negotiations for May 11, seven weeks ahead of the expiration of its current contract on June 30.
“The Guild enters this year’s negotiations against the backdrop of a rapidly changing industry. Declining production, the rise of AI, studio consolidation, and health care inflation are just some of the issues framing our negotiations,” negotiating committee co-chairs Jon Avnet and Karen Gaviola wrote in a memo to members.
That memo comes six days before SAG-AFTRA is set to begin a four-week period of talks for its labor contract with the studio representatives, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Former SAG executive director Greg Hessinger will take over as chief of the studio side for the first contract talks since writers and actors went on strike in 2023 for a combined 191 days.
As noted in the DGA’s memo, a major issue facing the two sides will be changes to the guild’s health plan, as the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans’ decision to allow Affordable Care Act subsidies to lapse have contributed to spiraling healthcare costs across the country.
In a November letter to members, DGA President Christopher Nolan and National Executive Director Russ Hollander were frank about the state of the union’s health plan, saying it “has run negative for the past two years, and those losses are projected to increase significantly in the future.”
While the AMPTP has signaled that it will propose record studio contributions to the Hollywood unions’ health plans in exchange for longer contract cycles that the studios claim will add more stability to the industry and encourage more production and job creation, labor insiders tell TheWrap that such a proposal will likely be met with significant resistance from union negotiators.
SAG-AFTRA will play a role in whether longer contract cycles get off the ground, as the Writers Guild and Directors Guild could refuse such proposals on pattern bargaining grounds if the actors guild says no. SAG-AFTRA has remained silent on whether it will consider such cycles, saying it will not comment until it has seen the first proposal from the AMPTP in confidential talks.
As with the other unions, the DGA will also look to improve streaming compensation and artificial intelligence protections. During its 2023 talks, the DGA negotiated a 76% increase in foreign streaming residuals that it estimated led to a 21% overall increase in streaming residuals. After the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes ended, the DGA negotiated an additional 50% residual bump for the most-watched shows and movies on streaming, matching the gains negotiated by WGA after their strike.
