New UK Guild

Screen Daily reports that television and film director Michael Apted is part of an initiative to launch a UK directors' guild.

Directors UK (D-UK) will officially launch in May with director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum) as president, and writer/director Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited) as the chair of its board.

Its vice-chairmen are Simon Berthon and Tim Sullivan, and board members include Peter Kosminsky, Brian Hill and Simon Curtis.

It is the first time that UK directors will benefit from a single organisation encompassing everything from pay and conditions to content rights.

Sturridge said: "A very energetic and large group of directors have worked over the past 18 months to launch this new and vital organisation - a single, representative voice for all UK film, TV and new media directors."

He added: "We are at a revolutionary moment in the dissemination of film programming and it is vital that the directors' voice is articulate, unanimous and clear. D-UK will speak for directors' creative and economic rights."

Apted, who began his career at Granada and is now based in LA, said he was inspired by the effectiveness of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) union.

He has been president of the DGA for the past five years. Having experienced shooting on both sides of the Atlantic (Rome, The World is Not Enough, Gorky Park) Apted said he was ideally placed to compare directors' working conditions.

It's expected that D-UK will have 3,000 members once it is established.