Writer’s Guild of America employees returned to the picket line on Thursday as contract talks for the Directors Guild of America warmth up.

Contract talks between the DGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers started on Wednesday and reportedly centered on most of the similar points because the WGA.

Some of the priorities for the DGA embody addressing wage stagnation, bettering residuals within the streaming period and bettering on-set security for employees. The DGA and Screen Actors Guild contracts each expire on June 30, with SAG and AMPTP anticipated to start negotiations on June 7.

“With the collective strength and unity of the full DGA membership, we are committed to winning a strong contract that sets a new path forward for our industry,” the DGA mentioned in an announcement posted to the union’s web site.

The DGA negotiations carry new twists to the leisure labor battle. Since most of the considerations raised by the DGA are much like these raised initially by the WGA, some count on one other parallel strike could also be coming.

Filmmaker Paul Schrader mentioned that as a result of the contract talks are so shut collectively, the strike might finish ahead of anticipated.

“The directors don’t like to strike. It’s the same issue,” he mentioned at a screening final week. “They’re getting burned by the streamers in the same way. So if the directors line up behind the writers, and then if SAG will line up behind them, the strike will be over — boom, right there. The streamers will bump up, they don’t have a choice. So theoretically the strike could go on seven or eight months, but if the director and actors join in, it’s over.”

The WGA is asking for improved working situations, a rise in residual pay on streaming exhibits and additional restrictions on AI know-how that may very well be used to write down exhibits or films.

The earlier author’s strike lasted almost 4 months within the winter of 2007-2008 and value the trade an estimated $3 billion. At the time, late-night exhibits and programming like Saturday Night Live stopped.

Producers really feel assured that this time round, they've extra banked content material to outlast the hanging writers.

“I think for us, we are well-positioned, and we think that with our strategic priorities and strategy in sports, but also in news, those are two areas that are not affected by the writers’ strike and the audience will pivot when watching television to those categories,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch mentioned in a convention name earlier this week.

The writers have media protection behind them. President Biden has publicly come out in assist of the union, and Vice President Kamala Harris backed out of a scheduled occasion subsequent week over fears it'd battle with the strike.

“We’ve had massive national and international news coverage,” WGA West President Meredith Stiehm wrote to union members this week. “Our picket lines have already shut down location shoots in N.Y. and L.A.; the late night shows went dark on Tuesday; and the ‘MTV Movie & Awards’ live show was canceled because of our action. All in only four days on strike.”

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