Production on "Unstoppable" has been put on hold — at least for now.
Shooting on the wrestling drama, starring Jennifer Lopez and Jharrel Jerome, halted Wednesday morning following WGA picketing at their shooting location near USC.
Somewhere between 15 and 25 picketers arrived at Unstoppable‘s base camp for the day around 4:30 a.m., with strikers working to maintain a lockdown on a site with numerous entrances.
Sources told Deadline that momentum on the picket line really picked up around 6 a.m. Another close to the situation noted that this is the first time the production has been picketed, though shooting has been taking place for at least two weeks.
The second feature project from Artists Equity, the new production company that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon co-founded with RedBird Capital, following the critically acclaimed Nike drama Air, which closed out this year’s SXSW Film Festival before going on to debut in theaters and on Prime Video.
"Unstoppable" tells the true story of Anthony Robles (Jerome), a three-time All-American wrestler born with one leg who prevailed in a national championship at Arizona State.
Billy Goldenberg, the Academy Award-winning editor who has previously worked with Affleck on films like Argo, here makes his feature debut as director, working closely on the project with Robles.
In conversation with the outlet, one member of Unstoppable‘s crew mused that there’s “a huge irony that the WGA is targeting a company like Artists Equity, which is actually designed to try to provide equitable wages for all. The WGA needs to differentiate how they’re approaching these things because they’re essentially picketing an independent production whose very thesis is making sure there’s fair wages for all.”
Artists Equity had talked at the launch about expanding the set of those garnering profit participation, providing “performance-based incentives to creators and crew that allow all participants in the production value chain to share in profits.”
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike began on May 2. More than 11,000 members of the WGA Writers are taking action over pay and a greater share of the profits from streaming services.
They are also campaigning for a higher salary floor and would like reassurances regarding fears on the use of artificial intelligence in scriptwriting, asking the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for a guarantee that it won’t be “used as source material,” thereby negating the need for actual writers.
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