(Los Angeles) The Emmy Awards ceremony, the most prestigious awards in American television, has been postponed for almost four months, its organizers announced Thursday, the strike of actors and screenwriters paralyzing Hollywood.
The television equivalent of the Oscars, the Emmys, originally scheduled to be held on September 18, will take place in mid-January 2024, Fox and the Television Academy announced in a statement.
“We are pleased to announce that the 75th Emmy Awards will be broadcast on Monday, January 15, 2024,” said a spokesperson for the American television network, which is broadcasting the ceremony.
This is the most important meeting of the entertainment sector affected so far by this double social movement, never seen since 1960 in Hollywood.
The last postponement of the Emmy Awards dates back to 2001, in the context of the September 11 attacks.
The screenwriters, on strike for more than 100 days, were joined in July by actors from the powerful SAG-AFTRA union.
Due to the current strike, the ceremony would have taken place in the absence of the named stars and invited American celebrities, which would have had a disastrous effect on television audiences.
The guidelines of SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160,000 actors, stuntmen, dancers and other professionals on the small and big screen, indeed prohibit all its members from filming, but also from promoting their productions, in person or on social networks.
And the writers could not have prepared the presenter’s speech or jokes.
The nearly four-month postponement is intended to give the two sides time to reach an agreement, although the gap between the powerful Screenwriters Union (WGA) and the bosses of studios and streaming platforms still seems wide open.
The Hollywood strikes shut down all American film and television productions, with a few exceptions, such as reality shows and game shows.
Since the start of this social movement, more than three months ago, the two parties have hardly spoken to each other. A meeting between writers and studios was held on Friday, but nothing came of it.
And the crisis worsened in mid-July with the strike of the actors, who carry similar demands, in particular better remuneration and a framework for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
Over the past decade, the advent of streaming has disrupted their “residual” earnings, which accrue from each rerun of a movie or series and allow them to live on between projects.
And the emerging use of artificial intelligence, capable of writing scripts or cloning the voice and image of actors, only adds fuel to the fire.
The postponement of the Emmys had already been mentioned for a few weeks with the extension of the social movement, without being confirmed.
This new date, in January, will allow the ceremony to take place in the middle of the awards season.
The 75th Emmys will take place one week after the Golden Globes and just 24 hours after the Critics Choice Awards.
The Oscars ceremony is scheduled for March 10.
In early July, nominations for the 75th Emmy Awards were announced just hours before negotiations between the studios and SAG-AFTRA broke down, leading to the actors’ strike.
HBO’s series Succession, a dark and gritty chronicle of a powerful family tearing itself apart to take control of a media empire, topped the nominations in 27 categories.
She must face the series The Last of Us, with 24 nominations, and The White Lotus, a satire of the life of the richest, with 23 nominations.