Newly elected DGA president Christopher Nolan doesn’t expect that the union will be accepting any five-year contracts with the Hollywood studios.
When asked during a recent interview if the directors guild would be open to discussing extending its contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers beyond three years, Nolan told Deadline, “Well, the DGA prides itself on being open to discussing anything.”
That being said, he added, “I don’t think a five-year extension is in any way a realistic proposal, and I think the AMPTP probably knows that.”
As Deadline previously reported, the DGA, WGA and SAG-AFTRA are all in need of cash infusions to their health and pension plans after being forced to dip into reserves over the last several years. While the DGA’s is currently the healthiest of the three, leadership has already acknowledged the need for the employers to contribute more into these funds.
All three unions are set to negotiate new contracts with the AMPTP in the coming weeks, and Deadline broke the news last month that the bargaining unit for the studios would offer a massive injection of cash into each of the guilds’ health and pension funds in exchange for longer contracts. Nolan made it clear that no formal proposals have been made, since the DGA won’t officially approach the table until May ahead of a June 30 contract expiration, he doesn’t think five-year contracts are realistic.
“If we had agreed to a five-year contract in March of 2020, where would we be now? We are living in an industry where things are shifting very, very fast in terms of how they choose to run their businesses, and there are no assurances they’d be able to give us on how that’s settling down or what that path would be,” he said. “They’re continually subject to turbulence in the marketplace, their shareholders and so forth. So, we have to balance being able to renegotiate at the appropriate time. So, we’re open to discussing anything. But that seems very, very unlikely.”
If there was a conversation to be had about the contract extensions, Nolan added, “I think tying it to healthcare seems inappropriate, frankly.”
Throughout a wide-ranging interview with reporters from Deadline, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter last week, Nolan discussed how he does plan to address the health and pension issues that the DGA faces as well as some of the other broad priorities the union leadership hope will bring to their negotiations with the AMPTP. SAG-AFTRA recently gave Deadline 15 minutes with guild president Sean Astin to discuss similar topics before the actors union leads the charge into negotiations in early February. Deadline has also requested an on-the-record conversation with WGA leadership, who have so far declined to talk.
Below are snippets from the conversation with Nolan that address some of the issues that are top of mind for members in 2026.
Heath And Pension Plans
Nolan and DGA National Executive Director Russ Hollander were frank with membership when addressing the issues facing the current structure of the guild’s health and pension plans in a November letter, writing that the health plan “has run negative for the past two years, and those losses are projected to increase significantly in the future.” The directors union isn’t alone as SAG-AFTRA and the WGA are facing a similar issue and, although Deadline hears the DGA’s reserves are in the best shape of the three, it’s high on everyone’s list of priorities to resolve.
Nolan confirms that the DGA has made cuts to the union health plan, “to be realistic about rises in healthcare costs.”
He clarified that, “with collective bargaining, the employer contribution becomes fixed for the term of the contract. So whereas with their other employees, they’ve had to contribute more to their health plans, ours have been frozen, and so that’s had to be paid for from the reserves.”
While he doesn’t think that the DGA will make concessions on contract length in order to resolve the deficits, he does find it “encouraging” to see the AMPTP is also focused on the issue. He hopes it signals a willingness from the studios to actually work toward a meaningful solution.
He insists “the employers are going to have to raise their contributions. That’s just a fact of life. Health care costs have gone up enormously in this country, and it’s one of the reasons for the last government shutdown. Everybody’s aware of that, and we’ll do our part, but the employers are going to have to step up and do this.”
Backend Profit Participation
In the last TV/Theatrical contract, the unions secured a bonus residual that the studios pay our for titles that over perform on streaming platforms. In addition, the studios agreed to some changes to the overall residual structure, reconfiguring foreign residual payments so that those are tied directly to the streamer’s foreign subscriber base, rather than the domestic subs. As Hollander points out, the 2023 contract also “increas[ed] the foreign payments by 76%, which led to a 21% overall increase in the streaming residual.”
Nolan says it’s just one example of how “the old models have to be reappraised” in the streaming era, which has been difficult because of how rapidly the landscape has changed in just a few years.
“The big disconnect, always, between the companies we work for and our members is that the companies we work for are rewarded by Wall Street for living in the future, and that doesn’t work for our members, because they don’t get the benefits of that speculation,” he explained. “Amazon went 20 years without declaring profit. Wall Street’s very happy for that kind of investment in the future, living in the future, and that’s very often what we see with distribution models.”
The Oppenheimer director points to the “constant undervaluing of cable assets” as another current example of this phenomenon, even though those assets still “make tremendous amounts of money.”
“There’s just this thing of, ‘Well, it’s not the future. It’s not the future.’ Well, members live in the present. We get paid in the present. We have to pay rent, buy food, whatever, in the present,” he continued. “So it’s always a balance. I think the guild has done a very good job historically, trying to look, ‘Okay, where do we need to get to without losing the necessary structures that we have in the present that are so important?’”
So, how will the guild continue to push for its members in backend or success-based payouts in the future? Nolan won’t divulge the details just yet on the negotiating committee’s positions, but he did make clear that, whatever the solution, it cannot involve a continued undervaluation of the directors guild’s members.
“I think one of the things that happens with disruption, one of the things that happens with things that come under the heading of innovation, is — whatever the merits of those models — they tend to come with the ability or the desire to pay us less,” he said, adding, “the residual structure that’s developed is a residual structure that’s allowed working members, middle class members of these professions to raise a family, to have a life, to buy a house. You can’t get rid of them. It would be devastating. They’ve developed over decades and decades, and they have to be preserved at all costs. They’re not outmoded ways of looking at compensation. They are the lifeblood of our industry, and they’re extremely vital.”
AI Protections
Since it was established in the 2023 contract, Nolan has served as the chair of the AI committee tasked with understanding the evolution of the technology to ensure the guild is on the forefront of it. The agreement also establishes a commitment from both parties to have biannual meetings to discuss AI developments. Nolan acknowledges that “quite often to agree to a series of meetings on an issue is to put off any kind of meaningful brass tacks in terms of how to actually deal with it,” but insists that’s not the case here.
“We have excellent protections, but that’s not enough. You have to have a voice in how this tool is used moving forward. Also, we like to try and have a voice in, what’s the legal framework? Because we generally aren’t the copyright holders of our work, but our income, our residuals, depends on the appropriate monetization of those copyrights,” he said. “So we’re constantly in dialogue with the companies about, are you maximizing the value of the work that we’ve created? Because we do benefit from that enormously.”
Keeping a pulse on how best to protect members from exploitation at the hands of emerging technology requires a great deal of foresight, which Nolan says he thinks DGA leadership has already exhibited in spades. But, he also thinks there are some circumstances where it’s still best to take a ‘wait and see’ approach.
“So, for example, the deal Disney did with OpenAI. I see that as a positive in terms of establishing the principle of licensing, but until we see how that’s going to be paid through to the union members of all three unions, which, at the moment, we don’t know what that’s going to be,” he said. “When these companies will have the support of the deals is when they’ve shown how creatives are going to benefit from those kind of licensing opportunities.”
Another unanticipated impact of AI that Nolan says he’s been eyeing lately is the it is being used to help serve ads to consumers. With the proliferation of ad-supported platforms, it is the first time several decades that audiences are often interacting with theatrically released feature films and prestige television for the first time with ad breaks, which can interrupt the flow of the story — particularly if AI models are choosing where to place the ad breaks (and what to advertise).
“In creative terms, there’s a huge number of struggles around, ‘Okay, what happens to our work that goes on television?’ That’s been a historic struggle, but the guild has had a major voice here, and in a strange way, with this brand new technology, we’re sort of looping back into those kinds of scenarios,” he said. “I, as a filmmaker, in my entire career, I’ve never had to deal with that reality till now, because you were always going to the home through VHS, through DVD, through Blu-ray, through streaming uninterrupted, not ad-supported. So something like the ad-supported model coming in, it might seem like a simple business decision, but it has creative rights impacts, huge ones.”
The DGA president also alluded to a desire that the DGA not only be prepared to draft effective AI protections but help guide the legal framework for regulating companies like OpenAI, which he says are “trying to essentially position themselves as a distribution platform, mostly, I think, to get the benefits of section 230 and try to inoculate themselves from any kind of legal consequences for copyright there.”
“But beyond that, it’s like, ‘Okay, if they’re becoming distribution platforms, how will they manipulate? How can we have a voice in ensuring the things that we’re passionately dedicated to on the creative side?’” he posited.
Domestic Production Issues
Six months after California lawmakers expanded eligibility for the state’s film and TV tax credit program and gave it a massive cash infusion, union leadership is still hoping that the federal government might soon follow suit. Local production is still struggling, but FilmLA recently pointed to some early signs that the revitalized program is having a positive effect on production within the state.
Nolan affirmed the DGA’s support for a federal film tax incentive, explaining that the union aims to persuade federal lawmakers to consider a stackable 25% rebate that can be combined with state offerings, “to be competitive with other places in the world that are siphoning production from the United States because of the excellent incentives that they have.”
In the early days of his second term, President Donald Trump appointed Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson as his “special ambassadors to Hollywood,” who he tasked with presenting him with solutions to revive the domestic film and television production industry. Deadline understands that Voight has presented the president with his ideas, but so far the only solution that Trump has seemed to give any attention to is tariffs on films made abroad. Never mind that many industry experts have questioned how that system would even work, it has also been quite universally dismissed as ineffective. Trump has also recently floated the idea of low interest bonds.
“As far as these other ideas, I don’t know how a tariff system would work. I don’t know how a bond system would work,” Nolan said. Giving credit where it’s due, he added: “But I will say that, since President Trump has started banning these ideas around, there’s a much more serious conversation from the studios about how to improve the situation in the United States, to be perfectly frank.”
During the conversation, Nolan explained his commitment to solving the production decline problems, which he says are not only a product of competition from overseas. In fact, production is declining globally, as many of the major studios have tightened their purse strings in recent years.
“If you look at the overall spending from a consumer, on media, on entertainment, on our work, it’s extremely stable, but we’re looking at a 35 to 40% decline in employment for our members last year. How do you reconcile those things? What’s happening to the investment? Why aren’t we reinvesting the consumer?” he questioned. “Because the consumer is invested in our work and values our work tremendously. So we need to look at how the new models have created this disconnect between, frankly, level of production and overall spending from a consumer, where it goes.”
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