The Writers Guild of America is still at the picket lines - making a stand against residual payments among other things †and informal talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have only just resumed. And although the two parties are still no closer to coming to an agreement, more studios have reached an interim deal with the WGA. Independent production companies Lionsgate, Marvel Studios and RKO have all come to an agreement that will allow the studios to employ writers that are currently on strike. First on the agenda for Marvel are big-screen adaptations of “Captain America”, “Thor,” “Ant-Man,” and “The Avengers.” According to Variety, this deal means "Lionsgate could wind up as the only major player that is able to proceed on script revisions and pilot production." Lionsgate have confirmed that they plan on pushing new seasons of “Weeds” and “Mad Men” into production, making each series the only shows with new episodes being scripted. Lionsgate is also the studio behind Frank Millers “The Spirit,” where a deceased cop rises from the grave to continue fighting town. However, the AMPTP insist that these deals are insignificant developments and that “these one-off agreements are meaningless because the companies signing them know they will not have to abide by their terms for very long, since they'll be superseded by whatever final industry-wide accords are reached,” a representative of the AMPTP said. “If companies truly had to live by the terms of these one-off agreements, we are confident none would ever be signed."