The Strike Ends, the Awards-Season Scramble Begins The actors strike is over, Hollywood is celebrating, and awards season is now really in full swing.  I’m Rebecca Ford, and on Thursday afternoon, just hours after a tentative deal had been reached between the studios and SAG-AFTRA, the Academy hosted a lovely luncheon that had an extra layer of celebration to it. The annual Academy Women’s Luncheon, held at the gorgeous Academy Museum rooftop, highlights the Academy’s fellowship for women program, and this year featured a keynote by America Ferrera. But the buzz of the day was all about the end of the strike and the excitement around Hollywood getting back to work and into production. I would describe the atmosphere as giddy. “Morale has really lifted,” one publicist told me during the welcome cocktail hour.  It was also the first time I was able to be in a room with so many potential acting awards contenders who could freely speak about their projects. Along with Ferrera, who earned strong praise for her work in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Annette Bening, who stars in Netflix’s Nyad, was on hand to introduce one of this year’s fellowship winners. Neither of their speeches mentioned their current projects—which would have been forbidden if the strike was still ongoing—but Bening was quick to acknowledge how wonderful it was to be at an event without the strike restrictions. “It’s good to be out and about,” she said. So what does awards season look like now that the strike is over? Over here at Awards Insider, we’re witnessing the scramble firsthand as studios and publicists rush to get their actors out there. Several months of campaigning have been lost, and so there’s a lot to make up for. Expect to see some major interviews coming to our site shortly. In fact, our first is already posted, in which my colleague David Canfield talks to Willem Dafoe about Poor Things and his six-hours-per-day makeup transformation.  A ton of upcoming events are also bulking up with actors now available to attend. On Thursday alone, I noticed updated invites for events for The Holdovers and May December which proudly announce that their stars will now be in attendance. After months of sitting and waiting, I hope these actors are well rested for what’s to come. There’s lots of work to do. Merry and Bright The Holdovers director Alexander Payne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld needed a lot of snow to tell the quiet, melancholy story of three people spending Christmas at a New England boarding school. R E A D  M O R E » The Iron Claw Premiere Director Sean Durkin called the drama about the Von Erich wrestling family the completion of a “lifelong dream.” R E A D  M O R E » How Cailee Spaeny Became Priscilla Inside the endless fittings, giant wigs, intimate conversations, and single-take risks that went into the creation of an indelible heroine for Sofia Coppola’s new film. R E A D  M O R E » Greta Lee on the High Stakes of Past Lives “After 20 years of waiting for something like this, I didn’t want to mess it up,” says the actor starring in Celine Song’s debut film. R E A D  M O R E » The Best Movies of 2023, So Far Vanity Fair’s chief critic lists the best movies of the year to date, from Priscilla to Oppenheimer. R E A D  M O R E »