The ongoing Hollywood actors strike will impact next year's film slate if it isn't settled in the coming weeks, Imax (IMAX) CEO Rich Gelfond said on the company's quarterly earnings call on Wednesday.
"We anticipate that there will be some movement in 2024 release dates due to the impacts of the strikes," Gelfond said. "If [the strike] doesn't settle until six months from now, we're going to have an issue in 2024 because a lot of the films that are on our slate for the second half of 2024 haven't finished filming. If it settles in the next couple of months, by Thanksgiving, I'll feel a lot better about it."
The strike, coupled with a writers strike that officially ended earlier this month after nearly 150 days, has already led to delays in the release of blockbuster titles. Paramount's "Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two" just delayed its theatrical rollout from June 2024 to May 2025. Warner Bros.' "Dune 2" was moved from November of this year to March 2024.
The actors union began a strike on July 14 after failing to reach a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which bargains on behalf of the major studios including Warner Bros. (WBD), Disney (DIS), Netflix (NFLX), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), NBCUniversal (CMCSA), Paramount (PARA), and Sony (SONY).
Similarly to the writers, SAG-AFTRA is fighting for more protections surrounding the role of artificial intelligence in media and entertainment in addition to better pay and higher streaming residuals as more movies and TV shows go directly to streaming.
The union restarted negotiations with studios on Tuesday after the two sides suspended talks about two weeks ago over disagreements surrounding streaming revenue sharing. Negotiations will continue this week.
The strike "remains a consequential issue for the box office in the near term given how important marketing is for theatrical releases," Chad Beynon, senior gaming, lodging, and theaters analyst at Macquarie, wrote in a new note on Wednesday.
Still, Gelfond said the strikes haven't been all bad for IMAX.
"Movement in the 2024 slate could create space for us to release films we currently cannot," he said. For instance, he said that the shifting of "Dune: Part Two" allowed the company to show films it wouldn't normally have the space for — like "The Marvels" and "The Hunger Games" prequel.
He added "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" movie and an upcoming film about Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour were both unexpectedly added to the release slate — coupled with Apple's "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Napoleon."
IMAX reported a 51% increase in year-over-year revenue in Q3, helped by the release of "Oppenheimer," which grossed $180 million at the IMAX global box office.
Alexandra Canal is a Senior Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @allie_canal, LinkedIn, and email her at [email protected].
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