The MPAA is inching closer to a compromise that would allow the studios to send awards-season screeners to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But now the prospect of dividing the film community between screener haves and have-nots appears to be the newest obstacle in reaching a resolution of the nearly 3-week-old crisis.

As of Monday night, the MPAA leadership had signed off on the idea in principle of distributing screeners -- either in the form of VHS tapes or VHS-quality, lower-resolution DVDs -- to members of the Academy. One selling point has been the argument that if the Academy members promise not to allow encoded screeners out of their possession, then if any screeners are pirated, they can be traced back to the recipients, who can be punished, possibly by expulsion from the Academy.

MPAA head Jack Valenti is pushing that approach in hopes of tying up loose ends over the next few days -- and is expected to circulate a detailed proposal to the MPAA signatories today. But the internal MPAA debate appeared to have shifted Tuesday to the question of how to handle other awards groups, such as the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., the guilds, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the various critic groups.

Whether the other groups can police their members as effectively as it is assumed the Academy can is one of the issues currently under debate. Whether the studios should be seen as favoring the Academy over other awards groups is the other subject of contention.

The HFPA, which sponsors the annual Golden Globe Awards, is scheduled to meet today. HFPA president Lorenzo Soria said Tuesday: "If the policy, which at the moment is no screeners for anybody, becomes no screeners for anybody but the Academy -- and that's a big if -- it's something that is of great concern to us. Keep in mind, the Academy votes primarily on English-language movies, and it votes category by category. We vote in all categories and in addition to English-language movies consider about 40 foreign films, so screeners have become an essential part of the process for us."

In a statement issued Tuesday, SAG national executive director/CEO Bob Pisano said the guild was "very encouraged" that the MPAA is reconsidering its position.

In a statement that suggested he would like to see the SAG nominating committee included in the compromise, he said: "(SAG) looks forward to working with the MPAA, studios and independent producers to protect against piracy while affording our SAG Nominating Committee members the opportunity to view all eligible performances within this compressed awards season."

Last week, WGA West president Victoria Riskin decried the screener ban for tilting "the playing field from small films to large." However, unlike SAG, which uses a nominating committee for its initial vote, the full WGA membership votes on its nominees and winners, and few companies have used screeners to court the WGA. According to the guild, of the roughly 50 awards mailings sent out to WGA members last year, only seven contained DVDs. As a result, the WGA is expected to release a statement today supporting the compromise even if it applies only to the Academy.

The DGA, for its part, has yet to take an official position on the issue but also is expected to release a statement today.

While the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. voted Saturday to cancel its awards this year unless the screener ban is lifted, its president, Jean Oppenheimer, said Tuesday that the group would not revisit that decision until it sees any possible MPAA compromise.

The New York Film Critics Circle also weighed in Tuesday, saying, "Though the New York Film Critics Circle is opposed to the MPAA screener ban, the group does not plan to withhold its awards for 2003 in protest."

Even at the Academy -- where officials declined to offer any comment Tuesday -- a number of logistical issues remain to be addressed. Traditionally, the Academy has not provided lists of its members to the studios and their various awards consultants; the award campaigners have had to develop the lists on their own.

If the Academy is about to step in to ensure that screeners are sent to the correct recipients, it is unclear whether the Academy itself will provide mailing lists. In fact, there also are the practical questions of whether mailings themselves will be allowed or whether there will be a more secure delivery method and whether screeners can be sent to agents and managers who represent Academy members or must be hand-delivered to the members themselves.

If the MPAA does rule that screeners will be sent to Academy members only, sources within the unofficial coalition of studio specialty arms opposing the ban said Tuesday that such a proposition might not end the controversy.

"There are a lot of issues on the table," one indie veteran said. "I don't know if (the proposition of sending screeners to Academy members only) is going to fly with the group. What's going to happen to SAG, BAFTA, the Hollywood Foreign Press? What are they going to say?"

The tight lid that the MPAA has kept on its evolving policy has further frustrated the specialty film world. One specialty division head described the line of communication between the MPAA and the group of specialty arms as "painfully quiet" at the moment.

Said one source close to the issue: "This is not brain surgery. It is being made much more complicated than it needs to be (by the MPAA). I think the MPAA is trying to slow things down."

Sources indicated that those against the ban are now preparing to step up their efforts to build on the string of scathing open letters directed at Valenti and the MPAA over the past two weeks.

IFP/New York executive director Michelle Byrd said she has been receiving calls from members suggesting tactics ranging from staging a boycott of the Oscars altogether to urging Academy members to abstain from voting this year to forming a coalition of the major guilds to speak out against the ban.

Gregg Kilday reported from Los Angeles; Ian Mohr reported from New York. Peter Kiefer and Nicole Sperling contributed to this report.