“The Bikeriders,” a drama starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Tom Hardy and directed by Jeff Nichols, has been indefinitely postponed amid the ongoing actors’ strike.
Disney and 20th Century were scheduled to open the film on Dec. 1 but it’s been taken off the calendar for now. The movie, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend, still hopes to qualify for this year’s Oscar season, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the delay. This requires “The Bikeriders” to debut in theaters sometime before the end of 2023.
Several other movies, including Timothee Chalamet’s sequel “Dune: Part Two” and the Zendaya-led sports drama “Challengers,” have been moved to 2024 because the SAG-AFTRA strike prevents actors from promoting work without an interim agreement from the guild. Recent releases such as Sony’s GameStop stock frenzy-inspired “Dumb Money” and Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie adaptation “A Haunting in Venice” struggled at the box office, at least in part because the star-studded films couldn’t get a boost from their cast on the press circuit.
After last week’s talks between the major studios and the guild ended poorly, Disney and 20th Century opted to pause the campaign for “The Bikeriders,” knowing that Butler, Comer and Hardy would be key in raising the profile of the film.
Adapted from Danny Lyon’s book, “The Bikeriders” follows the rise and fall of a fictional 1960s motorcycle club in the Midwest. Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, and Norman Reedus round out the ensemble.
In Variety’s review of “The Bikeriders,” chief film critic Peter Debruge praised the lead performances of Butler (“a born movie star”) and Hardy (“giving us two Marlon Brando performances for the price of one”). Without ignoring the dangers of motorcycle gangs, Debruge says “it goes a long way to humanize figures who’ve been long misrepresented on film, while giving audiences privileged access to this inner world.”