With summer time film season at its midpoint, Hollywood sometimes begins to show its gaze towards the autumn, when a trio of main movie festivals acts because the unofficial kickoff to Oscar season. Seven of the final 10 best-picture winners had their debuts at a fall competition, popping out of the gate with standing ovations and demanding acclaim that helped propel them by way of the monthslong awards-show gantlet.
However now that SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America are each on strike, may a protracted battle between the unions and the studios trigger these fall launchpads to fizzle?
Although the writers’ strike, which started Could 2, didn’t have a lot of an impact on the Cannes Movie Pageant that month, the actors’ strike that began Friday could considerably reshape coming fests in Venice, Telluride, Colo., and Toronto. That’s as a result of SAG-AFTRA is prohibiting members from selling any movie whereas the strike is on, an across-the-board ban that features interviews, picture calls and red-carpet duties. With out these appearances, festivals shall be sapped of the star energy that’s invaluable to elevating a movie’s profile.
The primary occasion that may in all probability be affected is the Venice Movie Pageant, which begins its eightieth version on Aug. 30 with the premiere of the horny tennis comedy “Challengers,” starring Zendaya. Venice has recently rivaled Cannes for glamour and headlines, so the lack of well-known actors could be a giant blow. Practically all the key moments at Venice final yr had been star-driven, from the viral clip of Brendan Fraser crying after the premiere of “The Whale” to the social-media scrutiny of Harry Kinds and Chris Pine as they appeared to conflict whereas selling “Don’t Fear Darling.” (Although if there had been a strike, Florence Pugh, the star, would have had a greater excuse for infamously skipping that movie’s information convention.)
The competition will announce its full lineup on July 25, and buzz suggests it may embrace extremely anticipated movies like Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, “Maestro”; Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” concerning the relationship between Elvis Presley and his spouse, Priscilla; and “The Killer,” a David Fincher thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton. These auteurs are at the very least well-known sufficient to select up a few of the promotional slack, although Cooper is likely to be in a bind as each the director and star of “Maestro,” since any press he does may very well be seen as flouting SAG’s prohibition.
The Telluride Movie Pageant, which runs Sept. 1-4 and shot to the highlight the likes of “Woman Hen” and “Moonlight,” needs to be much less suffering from the absence of stars: That intimate Colorado gathering is a favourite of well-known attendees as a result of they’re not required to do picture ops or media blitzes and may as an alternative mill round like common folks.
However the Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant, starting Sept. 7, is a heady 10-day affair crammed with purple carpets, portrait studios and press junkets that may all shrink considerably if actors are forbidden to attend. Canadian companies are already bracing for successful to their backside line if the competition contracts. Organizers issued an announcement of concern final week: “The impression of this strike on the business and occasions like ours can’t be denied. We are going to proceed planning for this yr’s competition with the hope of a swift decision within the coming weeks.”
There’s a workaround for actors to attend festivals, nevertheless it’s a slim one: Duncan Crabtree-Eire, the SAG-AFTRA negotiator, has stated that “really unbiased” movies in a position to safe interim agreements with the guild may have their stars do media duties. Nonetheless, that’s a proviso extra prone to spare the indie-focused Sundance Movie Pageant in January relatively than fall festivals, the place the most important titles are inclined to hail from main studios. And if the SAG strike continues into January, it is going to be extra than simply festivals that really feel the pinch.
A monthslong strike would hit the awards-season ecosystem with its hardest check since Covid: If stars can’t attend ceremonies, may the occasions be held in any respect? (A minimum of when this stuff had been on Zoom, the nominated stars confirmed up.) Publish-pandemic, status movies want all the assistance they will get on the field workplace. If they will’t be sustained by awards chatter and media-happy film stars, studios may decide to maneuver some extra susceptible year-end titles to 2024.
That might present an awards-season benefit to streamers like Netflix, which don’t should issue the field workplace into selections on what to debut or delay. And flicks which have already had a giant cultural second — like A24’s “Previous Lives,” an art-house hit from June, or Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which shall be launched by Apple in October however obtained a significant premiere at Cannes in Could — shall be higher positioned to thrive this awards season than movies that will not have full-fledged press excursions.
Will an settlement on this bitter battle be reached in time to save lots of awards season? Even when each side can compromise earlier than the televised ceremonies start, one change is prone to nonetheless be felt: Don’t anticipate the same old listing of studio executives to be fairly so effusively thanked in acceptance speeches.
