You have to admit that we are living in strange times in the year 2020. Dealing with the on-going struggle securing everyone’s civil rights in this country to dealing with businesses, concerts, weddings, and large gatherings being shut down in general all throughout the country. This being the case, this pandemic has also affected many studio systems in the content they are allowed to produce without creating large gatherings, in which case people would get sick. Nowadays, studios are leaning towards creating more animation to bring to television and streaming services given that animation departments are some of the only areas of production still operating.
Earlier this month there was a case in which a cast member got sick from being exposed to a large production setting. An article from the Rolling Stone had information that the new Batman movie that is currently under production had to be postponed at the beginning of the month of September due to Robert Pattinson (who is set to play Batman in the film) testing positive for the coronavirus. There was speculation as to whether or not it would be wise to continue production on the film. However, Warner Brothers seems to be testing the waters with the resuming of production.
The one area that hasn’t been affected in the entertainment industry has been animation. No one could have predicted that we’d be in the midst of a pandemic and quarantined to our homes, but animators are still able to constantly produce work and content from their homes. In another article from the Ringer, Alison Herman had the opportunity to ask a casting director (Jen Rudin) for Disney, Amazon, and Nickelodeon about the matter and she said, “It’s truly the one thing we can all do while we’re at home. We don’t have to touch each other in order to make animation happen.”
I believe that the future holds a lot of new exposure for a ton of new animations that are being created now. I feel that creating movies and dealing with large, on-set productions is creating more of a problem for the well-being of people and I’m predicting we will see a lot more productions being postponed until 2021.