The film industry has been recovering from the major losses during Covid-19 with an AMC Entertainment report stating a loss of $4.6 billion from the shutdowns during the pandemic. 2024 is going to be an important year for film and television history as the aftermath of the previous SAG-AFTRA strike will be affecting the future of the industry. 

We spoke to Christian Garmin, a professor at The University of West Florida, who graduated with a degree in telecommunications and film. He brings up his background knowledge regarding the strike itself and how the fight that the actors and writers put up was met with impactful changes.

“I think they got a lot of what they wanted, ” Garmin said. “Most importantly for those of us who love movies, a resolution to the strike means finally they can finally get all back into the business of making stuff so that we don’t have to go too long with a huge gap of not having great movies coming out.”

He mentions how the movies that were directly impacted by the strike will fill in whatever gap was left from the movie delays in 2024.  “I don’t think there’s necessarily gonna be a huge gap at all, ” Garmin said.  “Some big movies are coming out in 2024, some of them were supposed to come out in 2023, but they couldn’t because of the strike and as a result, that’s gonna add to the 2024 box office.”

An example of a delayed blockbuster pushed back to this year is Dune 2 which had a release date of Oct. 20, 2023,  and was moved to March 1, 2024.

We’ve seen companies take action regarding the gap from movies they ended up pushing back. Disney will be releasing Pixar movies that were once streaming exclusively during the pandemic while we await their next delayed blockbuster.

Garmin adds that the strike will cause more competition with the delayed movies having to compete with other movies that have not moved their release date. Much of the harm that affects the theater industry mainly comes from the pandemic and how it made streaming services place movies on their platform which started teaching audiences against going to the theater and waiting for them to arrive on said platform instead.

Garmin brings up that one thing studios need to do to adapt to this new shifting landscape is to treat films like events. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and the Barbenheimer Experience are spectacles that have benefited the industry.

When answering the question of how much of an effect the strike will have on the theater industry throughout 2024, we see that it is more complicated as the major struggle comes from other elements with the strike adding on to it.