The Boys Season 4 Hit With Delay, Will It Get Canceled?
The Boys Season 4 is in post-production, but it's still been delayed by the WGA strike.
The premiere of The Boys Season 4 has been delayed indefinitely due to the Writers Guild Association strike. JoBlo reports that the WGA protest is halting productions across the film and TV industry as the writers union negotiates for better pay, retirement benefits, and safeguards against the intrusion of AI in the script-writing process. Most of the delays and pauses are predictable, but this one is a little surprising.
This delay is unusual because The Boys Season 4 wrapped some time ago and is currently in post-production. As creator Eric Kripke explained on Twitter, a good bit of writing goes on in post, even though cameras have long since stopped rolling. Not only are actors brought in to dub lines in ADR (additional dialogue recording), he explained, but there is also essentially rewriting that goes on in editing based on how lines are cut together.
That level of post-production reworking might not be familiar to some, but Kripke says there’s enough of it going on in The Boys Season 4 to mean production would have to cross a picket line to move forward. That’s not going to happen, Kripke says, meaning their work will pause until a fair deal is struck. Fans are unlikely to complain about the delay as they want to see the writers of the series and films well compensated and protected.
There was a one-month gap between the production wrap on The Boys Season 4 and the beginning of the strike, which is about to cross its two-month mark. As more studios run short on films and more networks are forced to air reruns, negotiations will have to move forward, but at this moment, there hasn’t been a great deal of progress. What’s more, SAG-AFTRA, the actors guild, is set to strike if a deal is not struck with studios, networks, and streamers.
If SAG-AFTRA strikes as well, that means The Boys Season 4 would be on pause, waiting for both sets of negotiations to resolve since they can’t bring picketing actors in to record new lines, even if the WGA strike ends. The ever-nearing precipice of the SAG-AFTRA strike will also halt productions that had been able to continue despite the WGA strike because their scripts were finalized. This could really put the hurt to studios and streamers to make a deal, and we hope both unions are successful.
Fans awaiting the release of The Boys Season 4 are surely hopeful as well as it remains to be seen just how long the series will be suspended. As to any threat of cancellation, none has yet been made, and the delayed release date for the season does not appear to reflect any trouble with the series overall. The subversive and gory series has been well received by fans and critics alike and shows no signs of slowing.
If you’re interested in The Boys but haven’t caught up to Season 4, now’s the time to catch up on Amazon Prime Video.
