Writers’ Guild reaches mini-series/telemovie agreement with SPAA
The Australian Writers’ Guild has finalised its first Mini-Series and Telemovies Agreement with the Screen Producers Association of Australia.
The new deal sees a writer’s fees for mini-series and telemovies based on a percentage of the production budget. It complements the Series and Serial Agreement, which used to be the only agreement covering writing for TV.
The AWG Committe – John Doyle (chair), Mac Gudgeon, Tim Pye, Keith Thompson and Katherine Thomson – have announced the following terms:
Fees
The producer will pay the writer a minimum of:
• $30,942 per commercial hour or 3 percent of the production budget, whichever is higher, for telemovies and min-iseries.
About bloody time too. Writers in this country have always been the poor cousins, but without those lines on a page, nothing can get happening.
As a producer, perhaps I should thinking otherwise when it comes to paying out more money, or trying to find it in the budget, but I’d rather being in there working hard to get that every extra dollar that is going to make the other parts of the process much easier.
THis also allows the industry move forward and do what we are good at, making bloody good television, and rewarding the people who can synthesis all of the ideas into a script, so bit it.
Very true. Writers are usually the unsung heroes.
Any film or TV show (or any medium for that matter), regardless of it’s production value and quality, is worth nothing if the script or writing isn’t solid. The writers are the foundation of any good show, and to be finally acknowledged and rewarded for that is great news.