The Emmy Awards are moving as scheduled right now, with campaign events and interviews proceeding as best they can around the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes—but in a few weeks, the campaigns will go dark and the town will have moved on, even as the actual ceremony remains months and months away. The show, previously scheduled for September, is now officially undated, with eyes set on January as its new target. Nominees will in some cases be 18 months old. Far newer shows and performances will be honored concurrently with the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards. It’s all an unavoidably drawn-out mess.
I’m David Canfield, pondering with the rest of the industry what this fall is going to look like as the strikes continue on, even as some glimmers of progress start to appear. I wrote this week about the very strange Emmy Awards that we’re in for, whenever Fox and the Television Academy agree to broadcast them, and came away with the feeling that, perhaps, embracing the chaos and disruption is the only way forward. Interest in a standard Emmys so delayed on the calendar will be extremely, sadly low. So why not build an event around Hollywood finally getting back to work, and a bunch of celebrities finally getting to do their favorite thing together—dress up and take home some gold?
Even though Emmy voting hasn’t kicked off yet, we’re already sensing the fall-film blitz to come. Contrary to fears—and an early hint provided by Challengers, when it left its Venice opener slot—studios are mostly sticking by the big festivals, and in turn their big contenders, promotional restrictions be damned. Over the past week I’ve heard from several smaller independent studios encouraged by the chances of receiving interim agreements for their actors to still campaign—if they choose to do so amid the strike; a big if—while the likes of Netflix and Disney’s Searchlight remain well represented across Toronto and Venice indicates a similar steadfastness on the bigger players’ end. All of which is to say, Oscar season may look different, but it is moving forward, and campaigns are ramping up.
Yesterday, TIFF announced its first batch of Tribute Awards, with its director slot going to Spike Lee—a legend who, unlike past recipients, doesn’t have a movie headed to the festival, as of now anyway. (Another Oscar winner, Pedro Almodóvarwill receive the typically less-starry Impact Award.) As appearances have been canceled at smaller festivals like Locarno, it’s our first tangible glimpse of how different things are going to feel. But maybe it’s also a chance for the movies to speak for themselves a bit more, as voters start discovering them, while still honoring an icon like Lee in the process. This year’s Emmys, we can safely say, won’t be decided by the power of a star’s performance on the trail. It’s all about what they put onscreen.
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