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Remember when a new television season started in September? Not this year.
Looking forward to big-budget blockbusters coming to a theater near you next summer? Maybe not.
You’ve always heard great things about “Breaking Bad” or “The Wire” but you never got around to watching it? Or maybe something more recent like the “The Last of Us,” which just got nominated for more than two-dozen Emmy awards? Now’s your chance.
And by the way, it might be a while before you know how many of those Emmys “The Last of Us” eventually takes home. The awards show, as with much in the TV and movie industry, is also very much uncertain right now.
But what you can count on is more reality shows, and maybe game shows, and probably more opportunity to binge shows that have already been on your favorite streaming service.
That’s because about 160,000 actors who belong to SAG-AFTRA are about to go on strike, joining more than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America who have been on strike since May 2.
Prepping for the long-haul
Some movies are already complete, of course, like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” and set to hit theaters. And, like automakers or other manufacturers who might try to build extra inventory ahead of strike deadlines, some streaming services have been preparing for these strikes by stockpiling new movies and shows to roll out.
“We had to make plans for the worst. And so we do have a pretty robust slate of releases to take us into a long time,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in April, just before the start of the writers strike.
But that pipeline of new shows is already slowing to a trickle.
