Los Angeles Health Dept. Wants Film & TV Production To Stop Amid COVID-19 Surge, 'Mission: Impossible 7' Shooting Resumes In UK
Thanks to the holidays and a disregard for proper quarantining, COVID-19 cases are still surging across the United States. One of the hardest-hit states during the coronavirus pandemic continues to be California, which officially became the first state to surpass 2 million COVID-19 cases on December 23. That's why the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is urging film, television, and music productions to consider pausing their work for a few weeks in order to reduce risk and possible spread.
Meanwhile, despite the surging of cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom, where there's also a new fast-spreading strain of the virus, Mission: Impossible 7 is resuming production in a new studio location after a little holiday break.
Variety reported on the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health sending out an e-mail (via FilmLA) on December 24 asking that film, TV and music productions "strongly consider pausing work for a few weeks during this catastrophic surge in COVID cases." As of now, all of these productions are allowed to continue as long as they follow strict COVID-19 protocols. However, the county health department asks that they "identify and delay higher risk activities, and focus on lower-risk work for now, if at all possible."
Though the sets of these productions are operating with plenty of safety procedures in place, the health department points out that various productions require travel to locations, making it "more likely that people will end up together in vehicles or indoors in less-controlled settings" and thereby increasing the spread. Furthermore, hospitals are full almost everywhere across the state, making potential infection even riskier should one require more extensive treatment for COVID-19 symptoms.
There are currently stay-at-home orders in place, but that hasn't stopped the more irresponsible members of the population from traveling for the holidays, making things worst for everyone else. Again, all that's required is a few weeks of strict quarantining in order to squash the spread of COVID-19. But there are still too many people who think their freedoms are being infringed upon by simply staying at home and wearing a mask for the safety of the rest of the population.
Mission: Impossible 7 Resumes Production in UK
The United States isn't the only country dealing with a surge in coronavirus cases. In fact, the United Kingdom is dealing with a fast-spreading new strain of COVID-19 that forced an an emergency lockdown in London over Christmas and had countries like Canada, France and Germany to halting flights and trains to the country. But that's not stopping Mission: Impossible 7 from getting back to work in Surrey in Southeast England.
Variety reports that the blockbuster sequel has shifted production from Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden to Longcross Film Studios. Production took a break for the holidays, which supposedly started a bit earlier than expected in the wake of Tom Cruise's angry outburst at some crew members who violated COVID-19 safety protocols when the film was still in production before Christmas.
Yesterday saw a new daily record set in the United Kingdom with 41,385 new COVID-19 cases emerging. The entire previous week saw a total of 256,220 new cases, which is a terrifying surge of 25.7%. So you can understand why Tom Cruise was so pissed off when crew members were not being strict about following COVID-19 safety protocols. At the same time, it might be wiser to simply not resume production in the UK during this time, but as a producer, Cruise is clearly running a tight ship and doing everything to keep the cast and crew of the movie as safe as possible.
Mission: Impossible 7 is slated for release on November 19, 2021.