Double Strike Halts Everyone Else but Jesus Gets Away Unscathed
As the SAG-AFTRA strike stalls all other shows with Guild members in their casts, The Chosen just received a waiver from the Guild allowing it to keep shooting the series.
The joint strike of the Writer's and Actor's Guilds has already resulted in every show and movie that has a SAG member in its cast freezing in time. The Actor's Guild prohibits its members from acting for the duration of the strike, and those members are more than 160,000 North-American performers so virtually no filming project remained active.
The point of such brutal rules is, of course, to show the Alliance of Producers and the studios ruled by its members that it would cost them way more to ignore the Guilds' demands than to follow through with them. But not every show is associated with a major studio: some are made by independent groups that don't affect the Alliance's politics in the slightest. For these groups, unlike the big studios, each day of stalling is devastating in terms of finance.
Fortunately, the Actor's Guild cares enough to recognize the difference and is willing to make exceptions for independent production. The Chosen, the series about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, just became the first show to receive a waiver from SAG-AFTRA to keep shooting.
"Great news! We just received word from SAG that we have been approved for a waiver. We’ll continue shooting on Monday. To be clear: 1. We’ve agreed to all of SAG’s requests and their interim agreement. 2. Season 4 is entirely independent and 100% funded by donations," wrote the official The Chosen account on Twitter.
Great news for all Jesus enjoyers: the production of The Chosen's new season resumed the same day, and the official account gladly reassures the fans that they're back to work already down in the comment section under the original tweet.
Source: The Chosen via Twitter