Striking Hollywood writers reached an interim agreement on Sunday with four independent filmmakers based in New York.
A joint announcement by the two sides is a step toward ending a strike by the Writers Guild of America, which has halted film and television production across the U.S.
The latest agreements will enable the four indie producers, GreeneStreet Films, Killer Films, Open City Films and This Is That Corporation to resume business immediately.
No details of the agreement were announced, but officials from both sides said it's similar to agreements reached earlier between the union and 13 other film and TV production companies.
Jonathan Handel, an entertainment lawyer with TroyGould Attorneys in Los Angeles told Â鶹´«Ã½net on Sunday that the success of the negotiations so far could be attributed in part to the fact that the studios wanted to first wait until a deal was struck with directors.
"They wanted to put the writers to the side and do a deal with the directors, which they did a couple of weeks ago, and then try to use that as a template for the writers," he said.
Both sides, Handel said, made concessions to move negotiations forward.
"The writers dropped their demand for jurisdiction over reality and animation production... about 10 days ago, and that helped open the floodgates to productive and formal talks. The studios though, it's reported, have made some concessions and granted the writers some improvements over the director's guild, which is something they'd initially said they'd never do."
The biggest factor in driving things forward could have been fear of losing the Academy Awards ceremony.
"The Oscars are definitely a driving factor here," Handel said. "The writers demonstrated their power when they turned the Golden Globe ceremony last month into basically a cut rate press conference. The Oscars are... just about the most important day in American broadcasting for the networks and advertisers. So everyone was afraid... that the Oscars would once again implode as the Globes did."
