“Producers have come through the first three COVID waves and know what to do to keep things moving,” one veteran producer notes, pointing to safety protocols implemented at the start of the pandemic that, for the most part, have allowed studios and independents to keep making movies even through this fall’s surge of infections caused by the Delta variant.

“Rapid testing is widely available, so production facilities can test everyone every day, making transmission pretty unlikely. I really don’t see a big impact over the near term,” notes Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. “But if it turns out that Omicron is more deadly than thought and we are more defenseless, it will become a problem.”