Rox's Soap Box

Currently there are a lot of rumblings in Hollywood among the Directors Guild (DGA), Writers Guild (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and it’s stirring up a lot of heat. The Directors Guild’s contracts with producers are up this October and there very likely will be a strike as they’ve yet to sit down with movie and TV producers as of my writing this. Directors are looking for better health benefits and a new approach to compensation, especially is it relates to DVDs and online activities. The WGA and SAG contracts are up in June and they are waiting to see what happens with the DGA negotiations as they are fighting for many of the same things. The DGA is the more savvy of the three Guilds so it is good for the others that they are going in first. Now, what does a strike of movie and TV Directors mean? It means films currently on the docket are going to be rushed through production … fewer script rewrites, less time to negotiate with their first choice of stars, etc. We could see a big dip in the quality of movies and TV shows that are coming to the public the first six months or so of ’08. What this also could mean is that there will be a lot of creatives who don’t have jobs. Therefore we might be seeing a lot more really well done content coming to the online community – not unlike CAA’s brainchild of www.funnyordie.com . And to be really melodramatic … once content online becomes better and better and more interesting, especially if TV and movie stars are included – it will be much harder to get that younger audience to return to television and the Cineplexes. Stay tuned for more, darlings!