Hollywood has decided that tonight is the night to push back its list of films – including the latest James Bond release No time to die, The Unknown film and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. No time to die now has a release date of October 8, Ghostbusters five months postponed to November 11, and Unknown now it will not arrive until 2022, Exhibitor Relations reports.
Bond was the big movie whose third delay was enough to force the Regal and Cineworld movie chains to close all their locations in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was originally scheduled for April 2020, then postponed to November 2020 and now to April 2021. If you are counting, this news marks the fourth delay. Instead of releasing the film in streaming, as other studios have done, MGM seems adamant about releasing the film in theaters – but when it is safe to do so, there may not be that many of them.
AMC has warned investors that it is about to run out of money, and other cinemas may also not survive after mid-2021. Therefore, the move of the Bond franchise to the end of the year is not a good sign.
We can probably expect that even more films will be delayed as the delay builds up over the delay, since only a certain number of films can successfully premiere in physical cinemas in a given period of time.
Big ones we are waiting for now:
-F9
-Black Widow
-Minions: Rise of Gru
-Top Gun: Maverick
-Shang-ChiNot so big, but:
-Cruella
-Free Guy– julia alexander (@loudmouthjulia) January 22, 2021
We haven’t heard of Disney yet, but you can also add delays for Edgar Wright’s Last night in Soho! (now on October 22) and Sony Cinderella (now July 16th) to the stack.