HOLLYWOOD READIES FOR A SEASON WITH STARS ON THE SIDELINES

Hollywood is at a standstill. Actors and screenwriters are months into a dual strike. Film sets are dark. But the movies are still coming — or, at least, most of them. Even if that means some potentially solitary red-carpet walks.

“I’m hoping I’m not promoting the movie by myself,” says Nia DaCosta, director of the upcoming Marvel movie The Marvels. “No one’s there to see me, either. They’re going to be like, ‘Where’s Brie Larson?’”

Though the ongoing actors and screenwriters strikes are casting a pall over the fall movie season and prompting some films to postpone, a parade of awards contenders and autumn blockbusters are on the way, nevertheless.

The fall has long been the preferred domain of filmmakers and auteurs, but this year that’s doubly so. With cast members largely prevented from promotion duties, directors — whether helming an Oscar shoo-in or superhero blockbuster — are carrying the load, albeit very reluctantly.

“I think we’re now in a new world,” DaCosta says of the strike. “Everything that’s happening is an existential search that our industry is doing. It won’t be solved in one round of negotiations. But I’m hoping that the studios can end the strike soon and get us all back to work — to work for them.”

Up until now, the ongoing stalemate has had a modest effect on late-summer movie releases. “Barbenheimer” carried theaters through last month.

But now that the strikes have rounded Labor Day, with no end in sight, Hollywood’s high season is imperiled. It has already robbed the Venice Film Festival of much of its star power and will soon do the same to the Toronto International Film Festival.

Can you launch an Oscar campaign without its potential nominee? How about a global spectacle without its cast? Everyone is hoping the strikes ends soon, but it’s clear that, not long after COVID-19 upended the industry, the usual rhythms of the fall movie season have again been blown to smithereens.