Directors Guild reaches deal on a new contract with the studios

The Directors Guild of America said it has reached a “historic deal” with the major studios on a new three-year film and TV contract.

In a statement Saturday night, the DGA negotiating committee said it reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that includes wage increases, a new structure to pay foreign residuals — which had been a key priority for the union — and restrictions on the use of AI.

“We have concluded a truly historic deal,” said Jon Avnet, chair of the DGA’s negotiations committee in a statement. “It provides significant improvements for every director, assistant director, unit production manager, associate director and stage manager in our guild. In these negotiations we made advances on wages, streaming residuals, safety, creative rights and diversity, as well as securing essential protections for our members on new key issues like artificial intelligence — ensuring DGA members will not be replaced by technological advances.”

The DGA, whose current contract is set to expire June 30, began talks May 10.

The agreement ends what many had predicted would be contentious negotiations with the DGA, but it’s unclear what effect it will have on the standoff with writers, who have been on strike since May 2 in a dispute over streaming pay and other issues.

While some of the terms agreed to by the DGA could also apply to writers, the WGA has made clear that the situation is very different from 2008, when the DGA negotiated a deal that helped to resolve the previous writers’ strike that lasted 100 days.

Throughout its 87-year history, the DGA has staged a strike only once — a walkout in 1987 that lasted five minutes (or 12 minutes by some accounts).

This is a developing story.