Last week Fran Drescher, president of the Screen Actors Guild, the union of actors in the United States, practically declared war on the directors of Hollywood studios. “They should be ashamed,” he said about the companies that produce the series and films for their little interest in signing a new agreement that combats the precariousness of working conditions, that recognizes their residual benefits and that remedies the threat posed by intelligence artificial for his trade. “They are on the wrong side of history,” she warned them when calling an actors’ strike that paralyzes an industry that already had problems operating normally due to the writers’ strike that has been going on since May 2. Of course, there are three high-profile Hollywood series that are escaping the consequences of these labor claims: Dragon House, Industry and Dune: The Sisterhood, all produced by HBO.
The House of the Dragon is being shot in the United Kingdom under an agreement with Equity, a British syndicate. Performers were told Thursday that while they can show solidarity with the Hollywood union, Equity members are required to report to work. This means that the Game of Thrones prequel written by Ryan Condal will be able to go ahead with its plan to shoot the second season this summer. Thus, the production remains unfazed on HBO’s schedule for 2024, when it was scheduled to release with Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke in the lead roles.
Industry, about the young promises of the London financial sector, is in a similar situation. Production company Bad Wolf, which produces the series for HBO in the United States and the BBC in the United Kingdom, plans to shoot the third season because the actors also operate under Equity guidelines and not SAG. Curiously, this one does have American actors like Myha’la Herrold, who plays Harper, the protagonist, and Ken Leung, her mentor in fiction.
With respect to the prequel to Dune called The Sisterhood, which has been developed in parallel to Denis Villeneuve’s film sequel, the same thing happens: it is shot in Bucharest and, instead of working through agreements with SAG, it is done from Equity. This prevents actors like Emily Watson, Olivia Williams or Travis Fimmel from joining the strike and shooting is expected to resume at any time after a break for creative reasons. While some of them are members of the SAG, it is ruled out that they join the boycott started in Hollywood: the studios could denounce them before the British courts, which are not exactly in favor of the strike movements, especially if they are organized from the United States.
Dune: The sisterhood is set 10,000 years before the events told in the films by Denis Villeneuve, which in turn adapts the universe of Frank Herbert. It covers the founding of the Bene Gesserit, this cryptic order made up of women that guides the political movements of the galaxy, based on the relationship between two sisters played by Watson and Williams. Since the project came to light, the prequel has undergone multiple changes: director Johan Renck and creator Diane Ademu-John left the project as well as actresses Indira Varma and Shirley Henderson. Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) and Dana Calvo (Narcos) are currently in charge of production, who share the duties of showrunner.
