Interestingly, as TIFF and Venice announce their slates for the upcoming fall festival season, studios are contemplating moving many of their films, possibly into 2024. The reason, of course, is the SAG strike which prevents actors from promoting upcoming projects, which is why you also saw next to nothing coming out of Comic-Con last weekend.
Bloomberg reports that Disney is one of those studios weighing potential delays to much of its upcoming slate. This week sees the release of Haunted Mansion, which has had practically zero publicity due to both strikes, SAG and WGA, but it’s too late to change anything about that. How that movie performs will say a lot about the impact these strikes are having on the bottom line.
But Disney has other big films coming up, such as Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins, the controversial Jonathan Majors drama Magazine Dreams, animated fairy tale Wish, and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things with Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo.
In the case of Poor Things, that date has now just been moved from September 8th to December 8th. The Victorian tale stars Stone as a young woman brought back to life by a brilliant but unorthodox scientist, but eager to see the world, she runs off with a debauched lawyer on a whirlwind adventure.
It’s possible we could see Disney pull these movies from the festival circuit, or move them to others later into the season.
