The UK has removed film and television workers from the country’s COVID-inspired travel exemption list today, meaning that anyone traveling to the UK from a foreign country will need to be quarantined for 10 days or pay for a test that can shorten the isolation period to five days. In any case, it seems that it has become more expensive for Hollywood productions to send international employees to work in the UK.
Deadline reports that, since the beginning of this morning, two job classifications – television production and high-end television production and cinema – are now subject to travel restrictions to the UK. “If you are not exempt and arrive in the UK, you will need to isolate yourself for 10 days”, state government rules. “When you arrive in England, you must travel directly to the place where you are staying and not leave.”
There is a loophole, but, of course, you have to pay for it: through something called a release testing scheme, visitors to the UK can “pay for a private coronavirus test after five days and be released from the car. isolation earlier if [they] return a negative result. “
Although the United Kingdom is not facing nearly the same number of unnecessary deaths as we in the United States and vaccinations have begun to be applied seriously there, COVID-19 is obviously still an extremely dangerous force that continues to reshape the functioning of the entertainment. This latest update applying travel restrictions to film and TV employees who were previously exempted appears intended to directly affect ongoing productions and those that were planning to start shooting soon. I imagine there are tons of producers out there who are now frantically struggling to find local employees instead of using U.S. residents for team positions, because a decision like this can have an immediate impact on the schedule.
The deadline says that these new rules mean that producers will need to devote more time to filming if they are working with people outside the UK. This will probably not be an obstacle for mass productions like Star Wars Marvel shows or movies that happen to be underway there, but smaller productions may end up being thrown into chaos. Safety should be (and should have been) the highest priority since it started, but my heart is with those who are in a difficult situation because of this. It kind of makes you wonder why the film and TV folks were exempt in the first place – especially since I imagine that a considerable percentage of them came from Los Angeles, one of the biggest focuses of COVID on the planet.
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