Potential for a new normal after all?

Although talks in September 2023 between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios were described as encouraging and some hopes were expressed about the five-month dispute finding a resolution, there has been no hint as yet that the actors’ union strike shows any sign of ending. Indeed, the recent backlash against actor Drew Barrymore, for example, for recording new episodes of her chat show despite the ongoing strikes, which resulted in her opting then not to release them after all, suggests that the situation is very far from being resolved.

The impact of both strikes was especially evident at the two A-list international film festivals to take place since the actors walked out in July, namely Venice and Toronto. A number of articles and features highlighted that while a number of leading directors such as Yorgos Lanthimos, Michael Mann, David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, and Richard Linklater were in attendance in Venice, with the former’s Poor Things winning the Golden Lion, the dearth of movie stars in evidence took some of the glamour away from the event. While the stars of Mann’s Ferrari, Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, were able to attend on a registration technicality, inasmuch as the film was not a major studio production, there is clearly a fine line to be walked by such stars so as not to appear like strike-breakers. As a result, Poor Things’ star, Emma Stone, was unable, or unwilling, to walk down the red carpet.

In Toronto this year, there was a comparable dearth of actors in attendance to promote their films, with Ethan Hawke and Jessica Chastain being notable exceptions. All of which meant that Canada’s major event was able to shine light on the country’s own productions for once, such as Close to You (Savage, 2023). It does make one wonder what will happen when the next swathe of big glamorous film festivals – Berlin, Sundance and most obviously Cannes – are due in 2024, in terms of the films that will be available for premiere and who will be there to promote them, if at all. Already, a large number of high-profile releases like the Dune sequel have been delayed, a pattern which looks set to be repeated into next year.

But then, because of the surfeit of franchise movies, not least the apparent enduring obsession with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), perhaps the days of the glamorous stars have actually been numbered for some time. In the wake of the pandemic, and its undeniable impact on cinema-going, perhaps we are looking at an era-defining moment. As Ryan Gilbey puts it very neatly, ‘[t]hese days, IP rules: intellectual property, that is, with established brands, from Barbie to Spider-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, hogging the limelight that might once have been reserved for flesh-and-blood stars’ (2023).

So, in some ways this might present yet another golden opportunity for European cinema to step into the breach and thrive, at least until normal service is resumed. In that regard, perhaps, Lanthimos’s success at Venice shines a symbolic golden light on that opportunity. Indeed, for myriad European actors who have carved successful careers at home and in America – think Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer (Nolan, 2023), for example – it must be a difficult time when friends and colleagues might be struggling. Perhaps the lustre of working in Hollywood might start to fade the longer the strike continues, and so the lure of working on smaller domestic projects might grow. Perhaps the reunion of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin (McDonagh, 2022) will be a sign of things to come, where big stars opt to come home to work on lower-budget, home-grown films with greater certainty of completion and release? If big-budget production is truly beginning to stall because of the twin disputes with Hollywood studios, there is real potential for cinema in Europe, which is neither driven by, or beholden to, a high-profile cast, nor dependent on major studio support, to carve out some more space in the post-pandemic cinematic landscape. Moreover, if the strikes continue longer term, the A-list film festivals and major streaming platforms may begin to need to find ways of filling their programmes with more productions from outside America written, directed by and starring new talents, new names, new faces. It could herald a stimulating process of renewal, and signal a move away from the increasingly vapid franchise blockbusters which have choked up the schedules for too long.

That is not to say that only European art films could benefit. There remains a vibrant popular cinema culture across the continent, whether it be horror, for example, Pandemonium (Quarxx, 2023) or Erbsünde/Original Sin (Chaer, 2022), or comedy films such as Alguien que cuide di mí/Someone Who Takes Care of Me (Fejerman & Lindo, 2023) or Sul più bello/Out of my League (Filippi, 2020) to cite just a very few films that might certainly find an airing on a streaming channel such as Netflix, and perhaps even a big screen release to fill the potential gaps left by Hollywood films being stuck in production limbo.

It will certainly be interesting to watch carefully how both disputes play out in Hollywood, and whether, if they take many more months to resolve, a shortfall of films to fill screening programmes might force cinema chains to cast their net a little wider than usual, something many of the small film societies across the continent already do. In cinema terms, at least, we may indeed be heading for a new normal, even if in most other respects the post-pandemic situation appears to be the same old, same old.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).