The Emmy Awards, the most prestigious award on American television, has been postponed by almost four months amid the actors and screenwriters’ strike that is paralyzing Hollywood.
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The television equivalent of the Oscars, the Emmys, originally scheduled to take place on September 18, will take place in mid-January 2024, Fox and the Television Academy announced in a statement.
“We are pleased to announce that the 75th Emmy Awards will be broadcast on Monday, January 15, 2024,” said a spokesman for the American television network that is broadcasting the ceremony.
This is the most important event in the entertainment sector so far affected by this double social movement, which has not been seen in Hollywood since the 1960’s.
The last time the Emmys were postponed was in 2001 in connection with the September 11 attacks.
The screenwriters, who have been on strike for more than 100 days, were joined in July by actors from the powerful union SAG-AFTRA.
Due to the current strike, the ceremony would have taken place in the absence of the named stars and invited American celebrities, with a disastrous impact on television viewers.
AFP
While SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160,000 actors, stuntmen, dancers and other professionals on the small and big screen, has policies that prohibit all of its members from filming, they also prohibit the promotion of their productions, either in person or on social media.
And the authors could not have prepared either the speech or the jokes of the presenter.
The almost four-month postponement is intended to give both sides time to reach an agreement, even if the rift between the powerful Screenwriters Union (WGA) and the bosses of studios and streaming platforms still seems wide open.
Due to the strikes in Hollywood, all American film and television productions were stopped with a few exceptions such as reality shows and game shows.
Since the beginning of this social movement more than three months ago, the two parties have hardly spoken to each other. After an initial meeting between screenwriters and studios last week to renew dialogue, the WGA has decided to attend a new meeting scheduled for Friday to officially resume negotiations.
The union “is returning to the negotiating table,” is ready for “a fair settlement,” and expects “answers” from employers to their proposals, he said in a press release published on Thursday.
And the crisis deepened in mid-July, with the strike of actors pushing similar demands, notably better pay and a framework for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
In the last decade, the advent of streaming has disrupted their “residual” earnings, which result from each rerun of a movie or series and allow them to live between two projects.
And the increasing use of artificial intelligence, capable of writing screenplays or cloning actors’ voice and image, only adds fuel to the fire.
The postponement of the Emmys has been mentioned for a few weeks with the expansion of the social movement, but without confirmation.
This new January date allows the ceremony to take place in the middle of awards season.
The 75th Emmy Awards come a week after the Golden Globes and just 24 hours after the Critics Choice Awards.
The Oscars are scheduled for March 10th.
In early July, the nominations for the 75th Emmy Awards were announced, just hours before negotiations between the studios and SAG-AFTRA collapsed, leading to the actors’ walkout.
The HBO series “Succession,” a dark and somber chronicle of a powerful family tearing itself apart to take control of a media empire, topped the nominations in 27 categories.
She faces the post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us, with 24 nominations, and The White Lotus, a satire on the lives of the richest, with 23 nominations.