For those of you looking forward to the “Dirty Dancing” sequel (paging all people with a beating heart!), we have some sad news. The movie, which will mark the return of Jennifer Grey aka Baby to the Catskills, has delayed its release to summer of 2025 because of the joint SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike. The original release date was set for February of 2024. Sigh.
According to Deadline, “The studio is waiting to [get] the Jennifer Grey reprise in the right perfect state” — as they should, nobody should put baby in an imperfect state. Only a strike can put baby in a corner, voluntarily of course, because after all, she’s pro-labor (and pro-choice!).
“Dirty Dancing” isn’t the only Jewish sequel affected by the writer’s and actor’s strike. The release of the sequel to “Wonder,” “White Bird,” which stars Helen Mirren as a Jewish Holocaust survivor, is also getting pushed back to an unknown date in the fall of 2023. The movie’s wide theatrical release was originally slated for August 24, but the SAG strike would make actors unable to promote the film.
For all of those disappointed, another Jewish Helen Mirren movie is, as far as we know, still getting a theatrical release this summer: “Golda,” directed by Israeli Academy Award-winner Guy Nattiv, is coming out in the U.S. on August 25, and already had a premiere in Israel earlier this month. In the movie, the British actress plays the first (and only, so far) Israeli woman prime minister, Golda Meir, as she deals with the Yom Kippur War. Mirren, who is not Jewish, has been criticized for wearing facial prosthetics to play the Jewish leader from Milwaukee.
Mirren said that when she first was cast for the role, she told the director, “‘Look, Guy, I’m not Jewish, and if you want to think about that and decide to go in a different direction, no hard feelings. I will absolutely understand.’ But he very much wanted me to play the role, and off we went.”
“I do believe it is a discussion that has to be had — it’s utterly legitimate,” she added about the issue of non-Jewish actors playing iconic Jewish characters. Don’t worry, Helen, we will continue to discuss it right here.
