With more than six months of labor actions in the rear-view mirror, the industry is preparing to restart dozens of productions that were shut down while writers and actors sought new and better contracts from studios and streamers.The end of the SAG-AFTRA strike on Nov. 9 cleared actors to return to work (though the union’s membership still needs to ratify the deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), and also signaled the beginning of prep work on a host of TV series. Media companies are prioritizing getting their broadcast shows running before the holidays, in hopes of salvaging the back end of the network season. Writers rooms have been open for about six weeks, following the end of the Writers Guild of America strike on Sept. 27.NBC’s comedy Night Court, produced by Warner Bros. TV and Universal Television, will be among the first shows to return to work; it’s slated to resume filming the week of Nov. 13. A number of other shows, including CBS’ FBI franchise and NBC’s Chicago dramas (all of which come from megaproducer Dick Wolf’s Wolf Entertainment), are looking at the week after Thanksgiving to roll cameras.Season two of Netflix’s Wednesday, the streamer’s most popular series to date, will tentatively begin production in late April and will go from filming in Romania to Ireland. Not much else is known about the second season of the hit horror comedy series, but co-showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have hinted there may be more Addams family members.Starting in the next few weeks should allow enough time for network series to premiere in the first quarter of 2024. Most shows will be shortening their seasons to a range of 10 to 13 episodes, instead of the more typical 18 to 22 for a broadcast show.
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