New Media Signs Deal

The WGA continues to make interim deals with companies, this time with new media company MRC.

Though not a household name, MRC is an independent film, television, and digital studio with backing from significant institutional investors, including Goldman Sachs and AT&T. Most importantly, they have over a dozen original made-for-the-Internet properties with many more to come. This is a significant signing in that it hails the paradigm shift to original content for new media, produced and distributed under a WGA contract without the involvement of a major studio or network.

This deal began as an effort to get Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane and his writers a WGA contract on fifty webisodes which are being produced for Google. It quickly developed into a negotiation with MRC that would cover all of its Internet content (including projects with Larry David, Gordon Ramsay, and Second City), as well as a full slate of independently financed feature films and television series.