Pencils ready.
Now that the writers strike is over, Hollywood studios are gearing up togetproduction rolling again — once the other half of this year’s dual strike, the ongoing SAG-AFTRA walkout, is finally settled.
From “Star Trek” to “Superman: Legacy” to “Abbott Elementary” to “Wednesday,” every studio, network and streamer has priority film and TV projects that they hope to fast-track back into development or production. Audiences cannotsurviveon reruns alone. Had the strike lasted a few weeks longer, the 2023-24 broadcast season would have becomeeven moredependent on unscripted shows and programs imported from streaming platforms and overseas markets.
Several big movie projects could seepreproductionresume quickly.Paramount is hoping to have writers fine-tuningscripts for its planned reboot of “Star Trek” andits adaptation of Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six.”And Warner Bros.would dearly love to see Matt Reeves hunched over his computer,diving backinto Gotham’s underworldwith his planned “The Batman” sequel. Other projects, such as“Minecraft”andJames Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy,” havecompletedscripts and canbeginproduction in the spring, assumingthere’sa dealwithactors.Universal is hoping thatthe resolution ofthewritersstrikewillmean that the studio will get anew draft of “Fast X: Part 2,” currently expected to roll into theaters on April 4, 2025.
“The priorities seem to be things that were all but greenlit but stopped because of the strike,” says Elsa Ramo,managing partner at Ramo Law and an attorney who has represented Imagine Entertainment andSkydance. “They need to figure out how they finish what they started.”
That’s good news for a number of productions that have been stuck in limbo, their crewswaiting to get the call to return to the set.As soon as SAG-AFTRA’s work stoppage ends,productioncan resume on several major movies, including the sequel to “Gladiator,” which was morethan halfway done filming when cameras stopped rollinginMaltainJulyas the actorsstarted picketing. There’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two,” a globe-spanning adventure that still had some scenes to shoot, as well as“Beetlejuice 2,” Clint Eastwood’s “Juror No. 2,”and “Deadpool 3,” which, in some cases, only had a few daysof workremaining.Also stalled was“Twisters,” a sequel to the 1996 tornado thriller, starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as storm chasers.That projectwasroughly aweek into production in Oklahoma before it shut down.
The coming flood of production will create a logistical nightmare for production executives and everyone else involved. For one, finding soundstage space and locations to shoot will be a challenge. Some studio executives predict a brutal competition for top talent.
“As soon as the strikes areover, everybodyis going to want to go after the same five directors and four stars,” says one production chief. “It becomes a supply-and-demand question. Andwhereasbefore the strike the shooting schedule was staggered, everybody is going tobe putting a ton of movies and shows into production atexactly the sametime.”
On the television front, most networks and streamers are focused on picking back up with long-running shows and big-budgetfreshmanseries that were in preproduction or already shooting, rather than developing anything new.That’sbecause theywon’thave to put in as much time filling outwritersroomsor casting new roles. Instead, especially for shows many seasons in,they canreassemble the same ensembles and creative teamsand get back to workrelatively quickly.As soon as the actors endorse a deal, broadcast shows such asABC’s“Grey’s Anatomy” and“Abbott Elementary,”Fox’s“9-1-1:Lone Star,” and Dick Wolf’s“Law & Order,” “Chicago” and “FBI” franchisesare among thetop-priorityprojectsto begin shooting.But that also means it could be a “rough couple of months” of return-to-work schedules for the writers and talent attached to those shows, according to J.D. Connor, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at USC.
“Networks are going to really want to move things through quickly, as quickly as they can. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some experimentation there, in terms of the overlap between writing and shooting in an even more compressed way than we’ve gotten to in this time-delivery system,” Connor says.
While those episodes are being fast-tracked, Connor says you could expect any remaining holes in broadcast’s October and November plans to be full of some more “wild little experiments” like CBS airing reruns of “Yellowstone,” a hit for sister cable network Paramount Network, that has proven to be a big draw for the broadcast audience.
HBOis eager to take fans back toWesteros for more backstabbing,incestand power playswith the second season of “House of the Dragon,”targetinga summer 2024 premiere, and looking ahead to a yet-to-be-orderedthird season ofthe “Game of Thrones” prequel. While “House of the Dragon” was able to wrap filming on Season 2 during the strikes, as the scripts were already complete and the production is under a U.K. union contract, HBOwas not able to produce new episodes of“The White Lotus,” “Euphoria” and “The Last of Us,” andwill be putting its focus on those projectsin 2024, instead ofnew development.
For Netflix,top of mind iswriting scripts for andfilmingthe second season of“Wednesday” and thefifth and final season of“Stranger Things,”thelatter needing to happen before itsagingstarscan no longerpass forhigh schoolers.
TV development budgets for 2024 are expected to be greatly pared down as the studios work through the backlog after the five-month strike pause. On the movie side, some titles that were targeted for debut in 2024 or 2025 will have to be delayed.That’sa problem for cinemas, which have been struggling with the dearth of new releases for more than two years because the pandemic upended shooting schedules in 2020 and 2021.
“We’re still well below where we were in terms of the number of films being released,” says EricWold, a senior analyst with B. Riley. “We were struggling to catch up to pre-pandemic levels before the strikes, and I assume this will only compound those production delays and supply chain issues.”
Themad rush to get production restarted could quickly taper off, asstudios, networks and streamerstrim the number of projects indevelopmentand Hollywood is left to reacclimate to a businessthat’sbeen fundamentally changed.The Peak TV bubble was already losing air before the strikes; after the work stoppage, the employment landscape will be significantly leaner once production gets into full swing, hopefully by early next year.
“I talked to a couple managers today, and a lot of writers, directors, producers are hoping that there’s just going to be an influx of incoming calls and dealmaking,” says Ramo. “And I think reps across the board are tempering their clients’ expectations.That’snot necessarily somethingthat’sgoing to happen.”
Matt Donnelly contributed to this report.
