SAG-AFTRA Announces 2023 Strike Is Over: How Does This Impact ‘Star Wars’?
Hollywood’s big 2023 labor nightmare has come to an end, as SAG-AFTRA announced on Tuesday evening that the negotiating committee has approved a tentative deal for a new three-year contract with the big Hollywood studios, and lifted the strike mandate as of 12:01 am PT, Thursday. So, as of this posting, actors are no longer on strike and are allowed to resume their duties, from participating in casting calls to filming shows and movies to promoting them. We discuss here how this will impact Star Wars.
Details on the new contract are scarce at the moment, but the union has confirmed it’s valued at over $1 billion and it includes “above-pattern minimum compensation increases”, and “unprecedented” protections against artificial intelligence, and also establishes a streaming participation bonus strategy for members. The deal will go on Friday to the National Board to be approved, after which point it will be made public and sent to the membership for approval.
This has big implications for the industry and the Los Angeles economy in general, which has taken a hit of over $6 billion this year. It’s not just actors or writers who were out of work, but restaurant owners saw their attendance numbers dip and below-the-line workers like set designers, makeup artists, or electricians had no paychecks either. A sad reality that nobody really wanted to acknowledge on either side. IATSE and Teamsters, who represent these workers, will go through similar negotiations next year, and we could theoretically be looking at another labor dispute six months from now.
However, we are here focused on Star Wars, so assuming IATSE and Teamsters do not go on strike next year, here are some of the implications the end of the actors’ strike will have for Lucasfilm productions.
Short-term implications for Star Wars
In this first list, we’ll talk about projects for which the ending of the strike will have immediate consequences. They are the most likely candidates for shows where the talent involved will be receiving a lot of phone calls from Lucasfilm and the producers over the next few days to start planning their return to work, be it right before or right after the holiday break.
Andor season 2
Tony Gilroy’s Andor has been one of the most affected projects by both the writers’ and actors’ strikes. Gilroy, as showrunner, left the set in May shortly after the WGA strike was announced, although filming continued as usual in the UK. However, when the SAG-AFTRA strike was announced in July, the crews were forced to go home with 4-6 weeks left of filming. Now that they’re allowed back to work, they can finish shooting.
However, since we are in November now, a couple of weeks away from Thanksgiving and Christmas is also around the corner, it wouldn’t be surprising if they decided to wait until January or February to resume filming. The crew must have been working on post-production these past few months, editing and adding visual and sound effects to the hours of footage they’d managed to film since late November 2022. It’s possible they could use these few weeks before they set up the production once again to do additional recordings they may need to improve some audio or perhaps even voice CG creatures (not that Andor has a ton of those anyway).
The new season had announced an August 2024 release window, but by now, Lucasfilm and Disney must have backup plans, as it seems very unlikely they will be able to meet that release date. A late 2024/early 2025 date seems much more feasible.
The Mandalorian season 4
Production on the fourth season of The Mandalorian was initially planned to start in October. The scripts were ready back in May, and the team was deep in pre-production. But the WGA strike set them off slightly, as Jon Favreau, being the showrunner, couldn’t really actively participate in the process per strike rules. It’s unknown if the rest of the team continued without his supervision, or if they stopped altogether, but the announcement of the SAG-AFTRA strike was the final nail in the coffin for the original shooting schedule.
Favreau and his team have been able to move forward with pre-production this past month, after the end of the WGA strike — at least on everything that didn’t involve the actors. We expect filming to begin early next year, perhaps around February, to give the crew some time to rest during Christmas. Now that the actors are allowed back to work, they can do costume and camera tests, they can cast the supporting roles, etc.
2024 will be a big year for Hollywood scheduling, but we don’t anticipate that to severely affect The Mandalorian. The title character is played by two stuntmen who are solely dedicated to Star Wars, and even some of the main supporting actors, like Katee Sackhoff, Carl Weathers, or Emily Swallow aren’t working a lot elsewhere these days. Giancarlo Esposito could be an exception, but even if he’s coming back, which we don’t know, he usually doesn’t spend a lot of time on set.
Skeleton Crew
Jon Watts’ Star Wars show has been one of the big mysteries this year. Lucasfilm insisted since it was announced up until this summer that it was set for a 2023 release, but that is no more. The show was removed from Disney’s schedule on its Q3 earnings call in August and hasn’t really been mentioned since. This could either be because they wanted to do some reshoots that they were ultimately unable to do because of the strike, or because they weren’t sure how long the strike would last and they really didn’t want to release it without having Jude Law and Jon Watts available to promote it.
If the issue was about reshoots, they now have a few weeks before the holiday break (which other movies like Deadpool 3 will reportedly use); filming in the Volume allows them to not care about continuity issues with the weather, for instance. Or they would wait until early next year, as they have a bit of buffer time given Disney Plus has several big releases planned for the Christmas window, including Marvel’s Echo in early January.
If the issue is about promotion, that can also, theoretically, start right away and have everyone ready for a release in February or March 2024. And it’s not just about Jude Law. You also want the kids, who are the main characters of the show, to be out there and win over people’s hearts with cute videos on social media. Maybe they think they have a huge ace up their sleeves with the group of young actors and didn’t want to waste it because of the strike. Think of The Marvels, for instance, which is coming out this weekend with no promotion from its stars, yet it initially intended to use their chemistry on the press tour to get people excited about seeing them on screen.
The Acolyte
The Acolyte was thankfully not really impacted by either strike, as it had just a few days left of filming by the time the WGA strike was announced, and had wrapped by the time SAG-AFTRA started theirs. It was also too early for this to have impacted the marketing campaign, so ultimately it was affected on two fronts. First, the scheduling of other shows: pushing Skeleton Crew into Q1 or Q2 2024 probably results in The Acolyte moving into the summer, at the earliest.
And second, they probably have scheduled some ADR sessions with the actors, or recordings for CG characters that they couldn’t do during principal photography. The extent of those is unknown, so are really not sure how much it would have affected the whole process, though it’s doubtful it has really messed with it.
But there’s also the issue of season 2. It would seem reasonable to assume that, much like they did with The Mandalorian in 2019, Disney and Lucasfilm want to strike while the iron is hot and move forward with the planned second season of The Acolyte even before the first one comes out. Remember: The Mandalorian season 2 started filming while the first one was on the air. So, if this is the case and Leslye Headland moves on to the second season in early 2024, they can cast it a few months later.
Animation
Right now, the Star Wars animated project that would have been most affected by the actors’ strike would be Tales of the Jedi season 2. That was announced in April for a 2024 release date, so it seems reasonable to assume it was in the middle of its recording sessions.
A third season of The Bad Batch is also in production, though Michelle Ang did tease in late June that she was wrapping up her work on the series. Could that have also been the case for Dee Bradley Baker and the rest of the cast? Even if they hadn’t wrapped by July 13, they probably have just a few days left.
However, animated projects are some that are usually kept under wraps until the last minute, so the strike may have also impacted other unannounced projects that we don’t know about yet. But of course, it’s hard to speculate on those.
Mid-term implications for Star Wars
We move on now to projects that would have been somewhat impacted if the strike had been prolonged into January, but that are not expected to have been severely affected by the stoppage. They are mostly titles that were really impacted by the WGA strike.
The New Jedi Order-era Star Wars film
Pre-production for Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Star Wars film, which will see the return of Daisy Ridley in a story set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker, was originally set to start casting around August. But that was pre-WGA strike, back when Steven Knight was supposed to submit his first draft by the end of May. That window has now been moved a few months, and therefore, so has their pre-production schedule.
Aside from putting together shortlists of potential candidates for the lead roles, and maybe trying to convince John Boyega to join the project, Lucasfilm shouldn’t really start meeting with actors before 2024, as they are still waiting for a draft. But should they be happy enough with what Knight cooks up and decide to move forward with his vision, the casting process for the main parts could begin as soon as January or February 2024.
Big ifs there, of course, especially considering the studio’s track record with their feature films in development, but should everything go according to plan, they could start filming in the second half of next year.
Taika Waititi’s Star Wars film
A report by Deadline suggested earlier this year that Taika Waititi, who was announced to be writing and directing a Star Wars film back in May 2020, could be looking at a 2024 start date for his film. Per reports, multiple drafts have been submitted to Lucasfilm, and another could be due before the end of the year.
So, if he’s planning to shoot it in 2024, he’ll now be able to start meeting with actors for potential parts and maybe even revise parts of the script based on their input. This is another project that could be affected by a potential IATSE and Teamsters strike.
Lando
It was confirmed earlier this year that the long-in-development Lando Disney Plus series is actually a feature film with Donald and Stephen Glover writing it. From what we can tell, the two of them have been developing it for many months, and with the WGA strike over since last month, they should have been able to resume work on it, assuming they don’t have a ton of other stuff in the works (which they probably do).
But if things do really go their way, the project could be in good shape to start filming in 2024 given the amount of time they’ve already spent on it. Now, this is important, because if they are working on a story that would feature at least one or two people from Solo, where Glover’s Lando was introduced, they would heavily depend on their own and other people’s schedules, which could affect when filming starts. Not to mention who directs it. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about this project.
Ahsoka season 2
This is a giant if at this point. Despite wild rumors out there on social media, Dave Filoni still has no green light on the second season of the show. However, it’s fully expected to happen sooner rather than later, and probably Filoni is working on the scripts at the moment. Should he get a Christmas present, filming could begin at some point in 2024, meaning he could start meeting with actors during the spring. The big question right now is what to do with Baylan Skoll.
Long-term implications for Star Wars
For purely completion purposes, we might as well list other projects that Lucasfilm is working on but that aren’t directly impacted by the strike. For instance, feature films by James Mangold, Dave Filoni, and Shawn Levy were not expected to film anytime soon, so the only way the SAG-AFTRA strike affects them is the filmmakers’ commitment to other projects, and thus their schedules.
Think of Shawn Levy, who expected to finish shooting Deadpool 3 a few weeks ago, but still has half the movie to shoot. Since that’s expected to move from its May 2024 date, Levy would not move on to Star Wars until a few months later. Ditto for James Mangold, who was hoping to shoot his Bob Dylan biopic over the summer. That didn’t happen, so he won’t be able to start working on Star Wars until much later. And Dave Filoni’s situation really depends on Ahsoka season 2 at this point.
Projects that haven’t been announced yet but that may be in early development could have been impacted, but not severely. The WGA strike probably was a bigger hurdle for them, though if they had any actors attached, they might suffer from the big scheduling conflicts that are about to appear in Hollywood.
In any case, we are happy to report that everyone can now go back to work because SAG-AFTRA is satisfied with the contract they were able to negotiate. The nightmare has ended, at least for now. Let’s hope we’re not in the same situation a few months from now.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
