The shooting of a new thriller starring Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara has to be postponed due to concerns about a new Hollywood strike. It could hit more independent films of the same ilk.
Screenwriters:in Hollywood have been on strike since May 2023. The reason is the evolution of the film and series landscape, where temporary hires and low royalties prevail, while streaming services impose increasingly demanding conditions.
Now a new partial strike is on the horizon in Hollywood, affecting the stars themselves. It is set to start on July 1, 2023, which is why filming on the new thriller starring Joker star Joaquin Phoenix and Blinded star Rooney Mara has already been halted.
The next Hollywood crisis is said to be imminent
As Deadline reports, the planned start of filming on Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Island has been halted, even though the cast arrived in Spain ready to go. That’s because insurance companies are refusing to cover certain recent films out of concern about a new strike starting July 1.
The new strike would affect the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). This is an American union that represents, among others, thousands of film and television actors:in worldwide. Phoenix and Mara are also part of SAG-AFTRA. When they learned that they could not be insured for the shooting of The Island, they returned home for the time being. The new production start date for the thriller is unknown.
This development could be the starting gun for a wave of other affected indie films that will now be unable to shoot for the time being. Whether SAG-AFTRA will go on strike as of July 1, just like WGA, has not yet been finalized.
