The actor and writer’s strike has shut down Star Trek: Strange New Worlds at an inopportune time
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the engine that is driving the Star Trek brand for better or worse right now. It’s the only show to have generally favorable reviews, while also ranking in the Top 10 of most minutes watched among all shows documented by the Nielsen service. It’s a show that needs to keep its momentum in order to keep a very uneven fanbase happy about what is going on with the content.
So when the writers’ strike happened, the production took a hit, but it wasn’t until the actors went on strike that things got hard on the show.
Speaking to TrekMovie.com (via Cinemablend), producing director Chris Fisher revealed that the actor’s strike started the day before production would begin, saying;
"I had storyboarded pretty much the entire first episode. That’s how close we were to starting shooting. We were one day away from flying the actors in. That’s where we were like, “Do we fly the actors in?” That’s when it went above my pay scale."
When could Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ third season begin filming?
If that wasn’t bad enough, the production for the show has now morphed from a standard time-table to a shifting time-table depending on when the actors and writers can resolve their strikes. Fisher goes on to detail how quickly they can get things back on track, as they schedule a loose starting date at the end of every month, just in case;
"Myself and the producers up in Toronto, we kind of say, okay, let’s say, at the end of this month, what would happen? What would we need to do to then get going? And then once the strike passes that, then we set it for the next month. We’re not that many weeks away from being able to start, absent all the other conflicts which may have arisen by now. Who knows what everyone is doing?"
The writers’ and actors’ strike isn’t likely to end anytime soon for the major motion picture studios, but it doesn’t seem as far off as it once did. With smaller studios like A24 meeting the demands early and not stopping production, plus mounting fan anger at the studios themselves for leaked comments, the pressure is on.
When one of your studio heads lets leaks you’re going to drive writers out of their homes due to unpaid mortgages, just so you can win a strike, you’re not going to keep a lot of fans on your side.