With the SAG-AFTRA strike moving forward, the guild’s rules bar actors seeking to support the strike are not allowed to participate in red-carpet promotions or premieres of upcoming films. As a result, many festival PR teams are scrambling to compensate for their newly diminished publicity and reporter crowds.

As soon as the strike passed Thursday, plenty of actors walked out on their red-carpet interviews and screenings. Most of the leading cast for Oppenheimer, which includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Kenneth Branagh, walked out before the London screening after receiving word of the strike’s official announcement. As a result, the screening was pushed up an hour to allow them to give quick interviews on the carpet before leaving. When Nolan gave his opening speech, he announced that the cast was “off to write their picket signs for what we believe to be an imminent strike…in the struggle for fair wages for working members of the union.”

While this walkout is guaranteed to draw more attention to SAG-AFTRA’s efforts, plenty of festival marketing teams are more worried about how this will affect their publicity, seeing as very few reporters will appear to interview the newly released films’ stars. These films will still premiere at their festivals, but, as noted by a festival junket PR executive, “A lot of films won’t get the attention, or the publicity, they were hoping for.” While films like Oppenheimer won’t get severely impacted, there is still a strong possibility that films with relatively smaller marketing will not get enough attention without reporters to interview the stars of the film. 

This year’s strike will be the first actors’ strike since 1980 and will have a stronger impact on the industry and publicity at large, even for films where the stars also served as the director.