California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued a “stay at home” order for the state to protect the health and well-being of all California residents and to establish consistency across the state during the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.
The executive order issued on March 19th comes after he proclaimed a state of emergency on March 4th. It asks all individuals living in California to stay at home except for getting necessities such as food, prescriptions and health care.
Because of the order, filming for TV and movies has been shut down [1] for those who hadn’t already cancelled or postponed their production schedules.
Due to previous social distancing requests and restrictions by Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garrett, on crew sizes and limits by local authorities on filming locations, many had already starting shutting down production including NBC, Netflix, Disney and others.
Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, who were taping without a live audience have suspended production. The same is true for the late-night shows although they have figured out ways to release content online. [2]
Besides the production of movies being halted, the release of movies are being postponed. James Bond’s No Time to Die, Mulan, The New Mutants and many other movie releases are being re-scheduled for release at a later date.
Because people aren’t going to the movies (or can’t because of orders of their governors to shut down theaters), Hollywood reported its lowest daily box office figures since they started keeping track decades ago. The losses in viewings and revenue prompted the three larges U.S. movie exhibitors
AMC, Regal and Cinamark to shut down operations. AMC said they will close for at least eight to twelve weeks.
I don’t think we have to cry too much over the millionaire actors being “unemployed” but the shut downs of the filming of movies and TV shows affects tens of thousands of workers and businesses including prop houses, caterers, lighting directors, drivers, painters, casting directors, animal
handlers, couriers, hair stylists and more who are out of work. A lot of the entertainment workers are day workers and live paycheck to paycheck.
We’ll see if the millionaire celebrities help out the “below-the-line” workers – the crew and the support staff who make them look good and make it possible for them to live the life of luxury.