Luc Besson’s ‘DogMan’ Lands SAG

Luc Besson’s DogMan has become one of the first films to receive a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement that will allow talent to do press during the fall festival season. Actors will be allowed to promote the pic at its Venice Film Festival premiere.

Given how early it is in process, there are no confirmations of who will be in attendance for the premiere but the cast includes Caleb Landry Jones, Christopher Denham, Jojo T. Gibbs and Marisa Berenson.

Following the announcements of the films that would premiere at the Venice and Toronto festivals, many in the industry wondered whether films without AMPTP studios backing them would be given these agreements allowing them to do press during festivals, so this is a good sign you will see more interim deals allowing promotion. DogMan was independently financed and currently has no major distributor, so it would follow under the guidelines that SAG-AFTRA has been looking at when granting interim agreements.

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DogMan its not the first festival pic to land an interim agreement that allows actors to promote their movies. A couple of others are similar situations including the Lily Gladstone-led The Unknown Country, which was granted one allowing for the project to hold a premiere in North Dakota last month.

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Applications for the waivers were made available on the first day of the strike, which was July 14, and the guild immediately received “hundreds of applications … we will be responding to all of them,” SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said at the time. He noted that projects can’t have “any AMPTP fingerprints on them” if they hope to be granted an agreement. Since then, there have been 123 projects that have been granted an interim agreement. See the list here.

The film is Besson’s first film he has directed since 2019’s Anna.

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