Hollywood back to work after the strike: which series and films are the studios’ priorities?

The industry fears a “logistical nightmare” when all the films and series placed on standby will return to production at the same time.

Sharpen your pencils! The writers’ strike is officially over. That of the actors is about to be resolved too. So Hollywood studios are preparing to relaunch their productions, says Variety. Industry is warming up its engines and intends to get off to a flying start again. With clear priorities.

For projects in pre-production, Paramount hopes to move forward on Star Trek 4, Warner Bros. would like The Batman 2 And Superman: Legacy come to fruition to begin filming in the spring while Universal will have to spend the second with Fast X: Part 2.

For films that were being filmed when the strike broke out, we will have to wait a little longer for the conflict with the actors to find a solution. Only then, the productions of Gladiator 2 Or Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2 Or Deadpool 3 will be able to resume. And also Beetlejuice2who only has a few hours of filming left to complete!

Variety points out that the stream of intertwining productions will resemble a logistical nightmare for production managers and everyone else involved in the preparation. It will be necessary to find available filming studios and some majors expect to have to fight to have the stars as a priority, knowing that schedules are already complicated to align in normal times.

“As soon as the strikes are over, everyone will compete for the same 5 directors and the same 4 stars”explains a production manager. “It becomes a question of supply and demand. And whereas before the strike, filming schedules were staggered, everyone is going to be producing a ton of movies and shows at exactly the same time.”

Because television will also massively restart production. Prioritizing old series that last several seasons, with the same sets and creative teams, because they will be able to quickly get back to work, without constraints, and will be able to quickly produce new content for the channels. We think of Grey’s Anatomy, Abbott Elementaryto the sagas Law & Order Or Chicago. And specialists are already predicting an acceleration in writing methods.

“The TV networks will really want to move things along quickly, as quickly as possible. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some experimentation there, in terms of overlapping writing and filming in an even more compressed way than that which we obtained with this system already pressed for time”says a specialist professor in Variety.

House of the Dragon has already been filmed, but HBO will have to make the sequel to White Lotusof The Last of Us and D’Euphoria and will focus on it as a priority to have content to offer in 2024. Netflix, for its part, is focusing above all on the second season of Wednesday and fifth and final season of Stranger Things. Certainly the most urgent of all. Because the more time passes, the less the teenage stars of the cast look like high school students…