"ER" Exec John Wells "Writer's Strike Could Be Over in Two Weeks!"

Wells gives thumbs up to DGA deal

WGA leaders plan to meet over the weekend

As the WGA's negotiating committee prepares to meet Saturday to discuss the DGA's tentative deal with the studios -- and the WGA board of directors plans a Tuesday powwow -- the helmers' pact is getting a rave review from one former Guild prexy.

"ER" exec producer John Wells told Daily Variety he's very impressed by the deal, and says the template provided by it could produce an end to the writers' strike within two weeks.

"This is a genuinely landmark deal," Wells said Friday. "I've been involved in negotiations for 20 years. This is the best deal I've seen that anyone's been able to negotiate."

Informal talks among groups of scribes have been going on since the DGA deal was announced Thursday, and are expected to continue over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.

It's also believed backchannel conversations between key WGA members and CEOs and top execs from the AMPTP companies have already begun, possibly paving the way for a formal resumption of negotiations.

Wells said scribes should be happy about the gains made by directors. "This was the deal everyone was hoping for, plus a little more," he said.

He made it clear the WGA strike was a key factor in the helmers' gains.

"The DGA took all the leverage the writers gave them and negotiated a hell of deal," he said. "I didn't think we'd be anywhere close to this."

Wells cautioned that are still important issues that need to be resolved on matters that weren't addressed by the directors.

There's the thorny matter of "separated rights," for instance. Scribes are looking to figure out how they get credited and paid when work they do on a webisode of a show such as "The Office" or "Lost" is later turned into a movie or book.

Still, assuming the WGA and AMPTP begin formal talks quickly, Wells thinks scribes could be pounding their keyboards before Valentine's Day.

"This deal should be done in two weeks," he said.

Meanwhile, Wells underlined his embrace of the DGA deal in a letter to a colleague that's been widely circulated around the Net.

In that missive, DGA also noted what he called an "underreported" section of the deal that he found particularly vital. Helmers were able to get the studios to agree to open up their books to let the WGA look at the details of their new-media deals and contracts.

"This has never happened before," Wells wrote. "It will allow the DGA to analyze whether the terms of this new deal are working and if the revenues are being properly reported. This is another extraordinary aspect of this deal and a cause for celebration."

While a number of major showrunners have expressed their support of the DGA pact, the accord hasn't been greeted with universal acclaim.

Message boards on a number of WGA strike-related Websites are filled with slew of comments denouncing the deal, or expressing serious reservations.

Members of the popular United Hollywood site issued a first-blush analysis of the pact that offered a middle-of-the-road take on the directors' pact.

"The DGA deal, as we understand it, is neither reason for celebration nor mourning," scribes wrote.

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