The Directors Guild has signed a new three-year contract. It's essentially a status quo deal which provides for modest cost-of-living increases and a few minor trade-offs. Only days ago, the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA also signed a new three-year contract with modest cost-of-living increases and a few minor trade-offs.
Back when the Writers Guild settled its last strike and signed its current contract, there was some speculation that a "perfect storm" was coming into alignment; that the WGA, the DGA and the combo of SAG and AFTRA might all link arms to some extent since their contracts were all coming up for renewal at the same time. This did not happen, largely because SAG and AFTRA had such trouble linking arms at all. If you recall, after the WGA and DGA made their last deals, SAG and AFTRA splintered and the latter egregiously undercut the former. It's an achievement that they just managed to negotiate together this time.
This time around, the Producers might have elected to negotiate first with the WGA. Our contract expires May 1, whereas the DGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts didn't expire until June 30. Instead, in what was probably a wise strategy, the Producers opted to dicker last with the Writers Guild. Presumably, those talks will commence soon.
The WGA recently solicited input from its members on an ambitious Pattern of Demands which lists many areas in which we'd like to have the contract improved. I'll be very surprised if any of those demands are even discussed. We're going to wind up with modest cost-of-living increases and a few minor trade-offs. And a lot of very angry members.