As strikes end studios prioritise production of Stranger Things, House of the Dragon, Wednesday

The pencils are ready and on the board because as the WGA strikes have officially ended, all the writers have gone back to work. Returning to work, post-strike the studios will now be prioritising writing on House of the Dragon 3, Stranger Things 5, Euphoria and Wednesday 2, among others.

On the 148th day of the work stoppage, the board of the WGA West and the council of the WGA East voted unanimously on Tuesday to lift the strike order following a tentative agreement on a new minimum basic agreement (MBA) contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The unanimous decision to end the strike comes two days after the writers and Hollywood studios successfully concluded talks for a new three-year MBA deal on Sept. 24.

From Star Trek to Abbott Elementary and Wednesday every studio, network and streamer has priority film and TV projects that they hope to fast-track back into development or production.

Had the strike lasted a few weeks longer, the 2023-24 broadcast season would have become even more dependent on unscripted shows and programmes imported from streaming platforms and overseas markets, as reported by Variety.

The second season of House of the Dragon is targeting a summer 2024 premiere, and looking ahead to a yet-to-be-ordered third season of the Game of Thrones prequel.

While audiences will be able to return to Westeros next year, they won’t be seeing any new episodes from The White Lotus, Euphoria or The Last Of Us. All of these will be focused on only in 2024 as HBO was unable to put these into production.

For Netflix, top of mind is writing scripts for filming the second season of Wednesday and the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, wrapping up the fight of the high-school kids as the citizens of the small town of Hawkins fight off the nightmares from the Upside Down.

The coming flood of production will create a logistical nightmare for production executives and everyone else involved. For one, finding soundstage space and locations to shoot will be a challenge. Some studio executives predict a brutal competition for top talent.

“As soon as the strikes are over, everybody is going to want to go after the same five directors and four stars,” said one production chief. “It becomes a supply-and-demand question. And whereas before the strike the shooting schedule was staggered, everybody is going to be putting a ton of movies and shows into production at exactly the same time.”

This production nightmare according to another WGA writer will continue as the SAG-AFTRA strikes are still ongoing, and apart from financial issues there will also be a lot of horrible logistical issues forcing delays, re-schedules and maybe even scraping off entire productions and recorded shots.