“Freedom Day has turned into closure day.”
So lamented Andrew Lloyd Webber as he revealed on Monday — the very day that all remaining lockdown restrictions were lifted across England — that he was shuttering his West End musical Cinderella after a cast member tested positive for COVID-19. The theater impresario pulled no punches in laying the blame squarely at the feet of the British government, who he said created the “impossible conditions” that forced him to indefinitely close the show on the eve of its official opening.
With infection rates soaring across the country due to the highly-contagious Delta variant of the virus, the decision to remove the final set of lockdown restrictions, mostly affecting social gatherings, while also making mask-wearing voluntary, has been a deeply contentious one — praised by elements of the conservative media (which followed the government’s line in dubbing it “Freedom Day”), but heavily criticized by the scientific community in the U.K. and around the globe.
On Monday alone almost 40,000 new cases were recorded, the highest single-day tally since Jan. 11, with experts predicting that daily infections will soon top those seen during the deadly second wave at the start of the year. U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson himself spent his own “Freedom Day” in quarantine, having been pinged by the NHS’s special track and trace COVID app, which notifies all users who have been within two meters of anyone who tests positive for the virus for 15 minutes or more and asks them to quarantine for 10 days. BBC Radio reported on Tuesday that 1.8 million people in the country were currently isolating in a mass quarantine that has hit businesses across almost all sectors.
As it happens, the U.K. becoming one of the world’s leading hotspots for the most virulent strain of COVID has coincided with it also becoming one of the world’s leading film and TV hotspots. After already enjoying a pre-pandemic boom thanks to a healthy tax credits system, major investments from studios and streamers and a strong dollar against the pound, the added bottleneck that arose due to the lockdown in 2020 and subsequent rising demand for content has seen production levels skyrocket. “I haven’t seen it this busy in my entire career,” one film producer tells The Hollywood Reporter.
And across these bustling creative industries, much like Lloyd Webber’s musical where social distancing simply isn’t an option, “Freedom Day” proved — for many sector workers — to be anything but. In the days leading up to July 19, a sudden flurry of major productions were hit by what the media has called the “pingdemic.”
Shooting on the second season of Netflix’ hit period drama Bridgerton halted for a second time recently following a positive COVID-19 test and has reportedly paused indefinitely while the streamer and producer, Shondaland, create a timetable for return. Netflix’s feature-length musical adaptation of Matilda with Working Title was also disrupted following a coronavirus outbreak, with the first filming unit forced to stop work and isolate. And then there’s HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of Dragon, shooting across several stages at Warner Bros. Leavesdon, which shut down for two days on Monday after a production member tested positive.
But these are merely the shoots known about. According to another filmmaker, for every production that creates a headline, “there are another two or three that shut down and don’t become news.”
While Netflix is known to have strict COVID-19 procedures in place and carries out proactive testing on its series — which is why it has already identified cases and acted accordingly — others are less vigilant. THR has heard reports of one British feature film where the DoP and camera crew became infected after refusing to wear masks on set.
“On too many productions, COVID supervisors are not listened to and their advice is ignored,” says veteran Brit producer Jonathan Weissler of Balagan Production. “Quite often these supervisors are relatively junior production people who now have this job title but no actual authority. When a director or DoP refuses to wear masks what message does that pass onto the rest of the crew?”
Weissler also suggests that many production “cover up” their COVID problems, simply plugging gaps with crew only for more people to become infected the next day.
But with COVID delays now written into insurance policies, such corner cutting could affect any compensation that might be due when a production is hit.
“If they don’t stick to [the guidelines], they might lose the compensation they get when production is delayed, and they are sort of incentivized to stick to those,” says Enders Analysis COO and director of TV Gill Hind. “If you are not actually sticking to the guidelines, you probably lose that compensation.”
With most people on productions likely to be at least partly vaccinated, few people on sets are likely to become “badly ill,” she adds. “So people are going to be able to come back to work pretty quickly. And if you are immediately off, then your colleagues don’t get infected with it. So I think the industry has done pretty well.”
Adds Hill: “We are probably likely to see a few shutdowns. But it is not like everything is going to suddenly stop. I think the sector has been as careful as it can be.”
Despite the bumps felt by Bridgerton, Matilda, House of Dragon and likely many more to come, the latest chaos emanating from the U.K. is unlikely to have any impact at all on the level of production, which appears to be only going in one direction. The lockdown days of spring/summer 2020, when studios were forced to close their doors and projects were left in mothballed for months, have well and truly passed.
That said, the anger leveled at the government for its overall handling of the pandemic — not least the decision to remove all restrictions entirely amid a surge in infections and, as Lloyd Webber argued, its “blunt instrument” isolation guidance — isn’t likely to dissipate soon.
“I think our government has got blood on its hands. Not only have they caused so many COVID deaths by acting so slowly and clumsily during the initial lockdowns, but they’re now removing the mask policy when we are exploding with new cases,” says Weissler. “I have no problem wearing a mask if thats what it takes. It seems like a small price to pay, but our government have called removing masks ‘Freedom Day’ and that messaging has made masks so political at a time when it gives us the best chance of living with COVID until we get better treatment, or the virus mutates into something less lethal.”