‘General Hospital’ Production Shifts Timing For Cast & Crew Returning To The Set
Fans of ABC’s General Hospital are quite anxious to have new episodes airing again, but it sounds as if that’s going to take a while yet. Not long ago, word emerged indicating that the cast and crew would hopefully head back to the set to start filming new content again around the middle of July. Now that has apparently been pushed out at least a little bit.
The soap opera cast and crew stopped filming in the middle of March due to concerns over the escalating coronavirus pandemic. Up to this point, very few shows of any type have resumed.
The Bold and the Beautiful was the first of the four soaps to begin filming again recently. However, one day later, they put things on hold again to retool their safety procedures. Their group is back to taping again, and The Young and the Restless is planning to resume next week.
According to a Friday report from Deadline, General Hospital is now aiming to begin taping again during the week of July 20. That seems to be a bit later than producers originally hoped to have everybody return to the set, but not by a significant amount of time. Not only that, but it is said to remain a fluid situation that could still change.
Despite putting things on hold in March, General Hospital was able to air mostly new content until late May. Since then, ABC has been airing reruns, typically with a theme for each week. For the next two weeks, viewers will see the most recent episodes that aired in May before the reruns started.
So far, cast members have not been able to share any specifics about returning to work with fans, despite being asked frequently on social media. For example, Emme Rylan (Lulu Spencer) and Kirsten Storms (Maxie Jones) did an Instagram live this week to chat with their fans.
Naturally, Kirsten and Emme were asked about when they might be returning to work. The ladies said that there was not anything they could share publicly yet. However, they promised that as soon as there was, they would be sure to let their viewers know.
Even once filming does resume — assuming no setbacks or interruptions occur — it will likely take at least a few weeks for production to have new shows ready to air. Luckily, with B&B already filming again and Y&R aiming to start during the coming week, the GH team might be able to follow their lead and make this process work.
Fans were left hanging with a lot of major storyline developments about to drop, and viewers will be quite eager to see what the writers do with these stories once everybody can resume filming again.
