The Last Of Us, Euphoria, and The White Lotus top priorities for HBO as WGA strike ends
HBO is prioritising shows like Euphoria and The Last Of Us now that the WGA strike is over. (HBO)
The WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike is officially over after 146 days and film and TV studios are eager to get cracking on their most highly-anticipated projects.
While most will have to hold off on getting anything done until the SAG-AFTRA strike (Screen Actors Guild & American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) is settled and they get their actors back, studios desperate to get their scripts finished can finally get to work.
In the hopes of giving the people what they want as soon as possible now that the strike is over, TV studios are prioritising their most popular long-running shows before they think about developing anything new, Variety reports.
For HBO, that means getting the next seasons of The Last Of Us, Euphoria, and The White Lotus up and running in the hopes of getting them ready for a 2024 release.
The Last Of Us showrunner Craig Mazin is just as eager as HBO to get the second season of his hit series up and running after a wildly successful debut earlier this year.
Taking to social media after news broke of a WGA deal, Mazin told fans that he’d be getting back to work on season two “the second” that the strike officially ended.
That’s an update TLOU fans will be thrilled to hear – especially after Mazin teased that he had already casted Abby for season two.
Meanwhile, The White Lotus creator Mike White has finally gotten the all-clear to get to work on the scripts for season three.
The exotic drama was renewed for a third season back in November and HBO later confirmed that it will be set in Thailand, but there has been no word yet on who might join the ever-changing ensemble cast.
HBO is also prioritising the third season of Sam Levinson’s Euphoria, which is likely quite far behind schedule.
In an interview back in February, Maude Apatow, who plays Lexi in the hit teen drama, told Vogue that the cast was “totally in the dark” about what the third season might hold and hadn’t been sent scripts as of yet, but she hinted the filming was set to begin at the end of 2023.
Just three months after that interview, the WGA strike began, so chances are the Euphoria team is running on rocket fuel to get things back up and running.
Thankfully for the casting team, season three is expected to time-jump five years into the future, according to costume designer Heidi Bivens, so it won’t look all that strange when Rue, Maddie, Nate, and Jules come back looking a little bit older.
Meanwhile, over at Netflix, writers are under a little more pressure to get production underway before their actors get much older. Shows like Wednesday and Stranger Things are a top priority for the streaming service as its cast of teens slowly start to resemble fully-grown adults.
With all these hit shows returning to work at once, writers will be run off their feet trying to get their work done and could be in for a “rough couple of months”, associate professor of cinema and media studies at USC JD Connor told Variety.
“Networks are going to really want to move things through quickly, as quickly as they can.
“So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some experimentation there, in terms of the overlap between writing and shooting in an even more compressed way than we’ve gotten to in this time-delivery system.”
So, expect new television on your screens as soon as possible – but expect burnt-out writers too.
