Directors Guild of America membership has voted by an overwhelming margin to ratify the new collective bargaining agreements between the DGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
“I am happy to report that the DGA membership overwhelmingly voted to ratify the new contract,” said Paris Barclay, DGA president. “Our major gains in SVOD residuals, together with our improvements in wages and pensions, were the result of our forward-thinking preparation. With the groundwork already laid in previous negotiations, this new contract embodies what we knew was possible when we established our first New Media agreement nearly a decade ago. All our thanks go to our Negotiating Committee, led by co-chairs Michael Apted and Thomas Schlamme, and National Executive Director Jay Roth, as well as our Guild’s professional staff, for all their determination and hard work.”
Formal negotiations with the AMPTP began on Monday, December 5, and concluded three weeks later on Friday, December 23. Talks were led by Apted, Schlamme and Guild chief negotiator Roth. On December 29, the DGA’s National Board of Directors unanimously recommended sending the contract to members for ratification. Ratification voting opened on January 4, and the results were finalized tonight (1/25) after the deadline.
Gains include significant increases in SVOD residuals; increases in employer contributions to the pension plan; annual wage increases (2.5% in the first year, 3% in the second and third); increases in nearly all residuals bases; and a provision addressing the lack of TV directing opportunities for aspiring career directors. The new agreement also includes provisions addressing safety, improvements in creative rights–including expanded rights of members when their work is shown theatrically as well as provisions addressing late scripts–and specific advances that pertain to members of the director’s team.
The new contract’s three-year term will take effect on July 1, 2017 and will run through June 30, 2020.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More