Pedro Pascal has had a jam-packed year in both film and television so far; in fact, his calendar has seemingly been booked ever since The Mandalorian in 2019. His steady and transcendent rise to stardom has infiltrated virtually every aspect of popular culture and nearly put him front and center of one of the buzziest horror movies of the year.
Moviegoers and horror fans alike nearly saw Pascal in Zach Cregger’s highly anticipated sophomore film, Weapons (releasing August 8), as Cregger recently discussed the very different casting choices that were made before the writers and actors strikes in 2023.
Cregger told Entertainment Weekly, “I had a whole different cast for this movie,” he continued, “and then we had the strike, and then Pedro Pascal’s schedule threw us into turmoil. I had to recast the entire movie.”
The casting shakeup led writer/director Zach Cregger to cast Josh Brolin as the character of Archer Graff. Weapons is a horror film where a small suburban town must come to grips with a mysterious tragedy when all but one child from the same class vanish in the middle of the night without a trace. Archer Graff is a local father to one of the children who disappeared.
After the doldrums of the COVID pandemic, the film industry faced another brutal test when the Writers Guild of America went on strike in May 2023, which was then followed by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists striking alongside them in July 2023. By September, the Writers Guild had inked a new deal and the actors put down the picket signs in November 2023, but the fallout is still being felt today. In more ways than one.
Projects have been chopped up, recast, rewritten, or altogether scrapped in the wake of the colliding strikes. And this was after the entire industry (and the world) was brought to its knees in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. While box office returns are on the up-and-up, you can still see the ripples caused by the strikes with new releases today.
Cregger explained “This is what happens, right?” He continues. “The strikes delayed us, and then when you delay, people’s schedules get conflicts, and then you’re back at square one. I bear no ill will towards anybody. We just kept getting delayed and delayed. It’s like a domino effect. So I had to start over again.”
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