Film, TV Industry Reopening Guidelines Coming 'Later in the Week,' Newsom Says

Gov. Gavin Newsom said “industry and labor” groups wanted to “tighten up some aspects of their guidelines”

California’s film and TV industries will need to wait until “later in the week” or “into the weekend” before they receive the much-anticipated state guidelines for reopening, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday.

Last week, during a live-streamed Zoom call with entertainment industry leaders like Ava DuVernay and Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, the governor said the guidelines for restarting film and TV productions would be rolled out on Monday. But during a press conference on Tuesday, the governor said that the “industry and labor” groups working on the guidelines wanted to “tighten up some aspects of their guidelines,” meaning the guidelines wouldn’t be released until later this week or even this weekend.

A spokesperson for Newsom did not have a comment on which industry and labor groups were working with the state. Guild insiders told TheWrap that Newsom is communicating with the Industry-Wide Safety Committee, which consists of representatives with all Hollywood guilds, unions, and studios and has provided guidelines on safety practices for the entertainment industry since 1965. That committee is expecting to release its own set of guidelines within the next two weeks, the insiders said.

In the meantime, Newsom hinted that the film and TV industry’s guidelines might be similar to how grocers have implemented precautions amid the pandemic.

“They’re looking, by the way, [at] a process not completely dissimilar to what the grocers did with the industry, which was really, I thought, a model, in terms of guidelines, for safely reopening,” Newsom said. “It’s a way of suggesting this dynamic process of engagement across the spectrum of businesses and business sectors and across the spectrum regionally all across the state of California.”

Jeremy Fuster contributed to this report.