After naysayers predicted the SAG-AFTRA strike would greatly limit U.S. titles and Hollywood A-listers from walking up the red carpet at the Toronto Film Festival in September, an upbeat TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey has been talking up the strong American film presence in the first wave of Gala and Special Presentations titles unveiled Monday.
“We’re in great shape. We’ve got a lot of terrific films that will be presented this year, including many films launching with us. The scope of the filmmaking is global, as we always aim for, but it includes many key films from the U.S.,” Bailey told The Hollywood Reporter.
In all, TIFF announced 37 world premieres, seven international premieres and 12 North American premieres — including films by Anna Kendrick, Michael Keaton, Maggie Betts and Viggo Mortensen — as part of its first wave of official selections.
Bailey said Toronto programmers had been busily screening U.S. and international cinema titles for months and that invites had already gone out before SAG-AFTRA members joined Writers Guild of America members on picket lines stateside earlier this month. “Obviously we went back to all of the people behind the films we were inviting, just to see what the situation would be for them, should the (actors) strike continue. We don’t know if it will,” Bailey added.
Those conversations are hardly over, given Hollywood, from media giants to smaller indie filmmakers, is still working out how to navigate the historic strikes after SAG-AFTRA joined the Writers Guild of America with its own labor action and barred its members from promoting movies tied to major studios and streamers.
Bailey said big-name talent aligned with upcoming studio and streamer titles to screen in Toronto will not come north. But those big-ticket U.S. titles will show up anyways to allow the studios and streamers to continue to use Toronto as an audience testing ground and an awards season launchpad.
“That’s why filmmakers and film companies and journalists and buyers and sellers come, because they want to see how films play with the Toronto audiences. So there’s all kinds of reasons to bring a film here, even if the strike is continuing. Because you’ll still get that reaction,” Bailey argued. He was quick to add the fate of acting talent attached to U.S. indie titles unaligned with major Hollywood giants remains an open question.
“We have films coming in for acquisitions at the festival where they’re not part of the labor action, but of course they have many actors who are members of SAG-AFTRA. Then that’s a film-by-film, actor-by-actor decision,” Bailey insisted.
The TIFF CEO added there’s an argument to be made for SAG-AFTRA offering waivers to talent looking to promote unaligned U.S. indie titles in Toronto, just as the U.S. actors union has approved certain productions that are not affiliated with any of the struck studios or streamers to keep filming.
“We think there’s a parallel case to be made for films that have already been invited to film festivals, that are completed and were not completed under the terms of the AMPTP agreement, and where the SAG-AFTRA members could be granted interim agreements which allow them to agree to the terms that the actors are striving for,” Bailey told THR.
He added some Hollywood actors, while onscreen in upcoming U.S. titles, are also directors and producers, and would have an opportunity to talk up the goals of striking screenwriters and actors while in Toronto in September, as ongoing negotiations with AMPTP representatives continue.
The world premieres of films by Hollywood actors-turned-directors unveiled on Tuesday — Michael Keaton’s Knox Goes Away, his second directorial effort; Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour; and Chris Pine’s own first feature, Poolman – is more a product of the pandemic, Bailey added, as A-listers with time on their hands embraced passion projects to get into the director’s chair.
“This is his first time directing a feature film and he’s very good at it. It’s a really strong crime thriller,” Bailey said of Keaton’s Knox Goes Away.
Other directors like Viggo Mortensen with The Dead Don’t Hurt and Ethan Hawke with Wildcat have been committed to directing for some time, while Bailey also points to Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, a true crime drama where she also stars as a bachelorette on the hit 1970s TV matchmaking show The Dating Game whose bachelor pick turns out to be a serial killer, as continuing a mission by the Pitch Perfect star to tell stories about how male violence impacts women.
The Toronto Film Festival will make additional lineup announcements during the coming weeks, before its official 2023 selections are unveiled Aug. 15. The 48th edition of TIFF is set to run Sept. 7-17.
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