A thaw may be forming in the long-running dispute between Britain’s film performers and producers, frozen since December.

Equity has summoned its council for a special meeting on March 5 to seek authority to reopen formal negotiations with producers’ trade body, Pact.

The two sides split in early December when talks collapsed over terms for a replacement to the contract that lapsed on Dec. 1.

Behind-the-scenes contact never stopped, and recent exchanges suggest the distance between their positions has narrowed enough to make a return to table talks plausible.

At the heart of the row is residuals.

British performers insist on being paid follow-on fees similar to those enjoyed by U.S. actors; producers accept the principle but dispute the scale.

For independent British films the gap is relatively small: actors would receive a tiny share of a producer’s net receipts — a sum that, producers say, is unlikely to materialize in any meaningful way when net profit is rarely reported.

The sticking point is Hollywood-financed movies shot in the U.K., where actors want a cut of global home-video revenue and Pact initially sought to carve out revenues from North America and continental Europe — roughly 70% of the market — from any payout.

Recent soundings in Los Angeles, however, indicate Pact may be more open to compromise on the geographic scope than previously believed.

Technically, Equity remains on strike, but in practice it has allowed interim agreements for productions that requested them — including big titles such as Bond 20 and the second Harry Potter — to continue.

Still, the uncertainty surrounding the dispute is prompting some American studios to think twice about filming in Britain.

Equity will hold a meeting of its most active screen actors and their agents on March 4 to assess sentiment; if feedback is favorable, officials will present a negotiating mandate to the council the following day.

Across the awards circuit, BAFTA’s choices have become fodder for Oscar prognostication.

After Peter Jackson’s epic took BAFTAs for Best Film and Best Director on Feb. 23, Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein predicted the tide had turned against earlier frontrunners and toward The Lord of the Rings.

BAFTA chairman Simon Relph responded that while the British academy welcomes being influential, he hopes its awards are valued in their own right rather than viewed simply as a preview of Academy voting.

Studios including DreamWorks and Universal are watching nervously for other factors that could sway ballots — notably concerns that Russell Crowe’s recent angry confrontation with a BAFTA TV producer, occurring shortly before Academy ballots are distributed, might damage his Best Actor prospects.

On the production front, Mike Leigh’s next feature — currently referred to as “Untitled 03” — will not centre on flight attendants.

Leigh had contemplated a film about cabin crew but, in the wake of September 11, that subject was judged inappropriate and shelved for now.

Funding for his new project is coming from Studiocanal and the UK Film Council’s Premiere Fund.

Studiocanal is also collaborating with Leigh’s longtime producer Simon Channing-Williams on a screen version of John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener, with Jeffrey Caine (co-writer of GoldenEye) adapting the novel.

Meanwhile the Premiere Fund is attaching itself to another Channing-Williams production: a big-screen adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby directed by Doug McGrath.

Gotham’s Hart Sharp is co-producing while United Artists has taken worldwide rights; confirmed cast names include Charlie Hunnam, Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, Christopher Plummer and Nathan Lane, with offers out to several other performers. Shooting is slated to begin April 2.

Separately, Nik Powell’s Scala Productions has optioned Matthew Kneale’s Booker-winning novel English Passengers.

Alan Bleasdale, an experienced television writer, has been signed to turn the 19th-century yarn — which intertwines comedy and tragedy around the violent colonisation and decimation of Tasmania’s indigenous people — into a screenplay.

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