Hollywood readies for a season with stars on the sidelines

NEW YORK

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" [Nov. 10].

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.

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

Much is in flux. Taylor Swift is in. “Dune” is out. Release-date jockeying continues. But for many of the filmmakers releasing films in the coming months, even their own movies aren’t the top concern.

“This fall is such an exciting time for movies. I just want to see every movie coming out,” says Emerald Fennell, whose high-society satire “Saltburn” opens Nov. 24. “But for the industry to be sustainable - for it to be much more accessible to people, for it to be better paid for everyone at every single level – that’s the thing. That’s the priority as far as I’m concerned.”

For now, the strikes are leaving festival stages unusually bare and red-carpet premieres quiet or non-existent. Such a prospect has forced some films out of 2023, including two starring Zendaya. “Dune: Part Two” and “Challengers” have both postponed, as has the “Wonder” spinoff “White Bird.”

Many of the fall’s top titles have stayed put or shuffled backward, hoping resolution comes in early autumn. Those include late October releases like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” (in theaters Oct. 20) and November entries like the prequel “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” (Nov. 17) and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” (Nov. 22), with Joaquin Phoenix.