Reps of Hollywood writers and the major studios enter this week sharing a single resolve: once more, with feeling.

The WGA will hold informal talks with studio CEOs this week in an effort to resume formal negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. News of the hopeful development circulated Friday, a day after the announcement of a new contract with the DGA.

The striking WGA, which hasn't held a negotiating session with the AMPTP since Dec. 7, studied terms of the DGA contract all weekend. The WGA negotiating committee met Saturday and will convene again Tuesday, with the WGA West board set to meet Tuesday morning and the WGA East council also assembling soon.

"We're going to follow the same pattern as the DGA," a WGA insider said. "First meeting with the studio executives informally and then maybe following that up with actual negotiations. But first we have to study all of the details of the DGA deal."

At least two top media chiefs -- News Corp.'s Peter Chernin and CBS Corp.'s Leslie Moonves -- engaged in back-channel communications with guild officials during the weekend. A management source said it could take until midweek for the parties to advance those chats to more elaborate, if informal, discussions.

But a top guild source said that select CEOs had agreed to discuss some ground rules for such talks Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the significance of further informal talks directly with top studios executives is twofold.

First, it will allow both sides to sort through peripheral issues so the parties then can take into any resumed formal talks only those issues key to a settlement. Most specifically, the sides will have to sort through three somewhat fringe issues that the AMPTP has found objectionable: reality TV and animation jurisdiction, the right to stage sympathy strikes, and forced arbitration in residual situations involving vertically integrated businesses.

Second, the informal talks with studio chiefs will put guild negotiators in direct contact with those on the management side who can actually approve the most important components of a settlement.