How Indian Talent Management Agency Tulsea Is Scripting A Better Deal For Writers In Growth Markets

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: With the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike underway, and guilds around the world expressing solidarity, issues surrounding writers and the way they’re compensated have become front and center of a global conversation.

But Datta Dave, co-founder of Mumbai and Los Angeles-based agency Tulsea, whose clients include Sudip Sharma, Puneet Krishna and Shonali Bose, points out that while the WGA is dealing with important issues, they’re also “mature market issues” – or to be less polite, first world problems – as conditions for writers in developing markets are way behind even the basic rights that the WGA and other guilds have secured in the West.  “Over here we’re still at the stage where we’re asking for writers to get a credit on a billboard,” Dave says. “And while Hollywood might say writers don’t always get a credit on a billboard, the pendulum has swung so far the other way here that we’re trying to course correct a bit.”  Although writers and showrunners have never been more in demand in India – with U.S.

studios and streamers including Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime Video pouring investment into local-language content – they’re still fighting for terms and conditions that writers in the West would take for granted.

Indian writers do not have access to standard contractual clauses covering minimums, residuals, the way payments are structured or how credits are determined.