A Heap of Already-Delayed Big Movies Are Postponing Their Cinema Releases Again
Including new Bond movie 'No Time to Die,' horror sequel 'A Quiet Place Part II' and the latest 'Ghostbusters' film.
When cinemas around the globe started temporarily shutting down in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II was only weeks away from opening. The film's release was quickly moved to September 2020, when it was hoped that life might've returned normal — and, when that didn't end up panning out, to April 2021. Now, the film has just shifted its release date again, this time staking out mid-September as the new time that cinephiles will be able to see the John Krasinski-directed, Emily-Blunt-starring follow-up to 2018 hit A Quiet Place.
Cinemas Down Under are currently up and running, and have been for months (although Melbourne's reopened, then closed down again during the city's second lockdown in the latter half of 2020, then relaunched once more). But with COVID-19 numbers still enormously high in places such as the US and UK — with many cinemas closed in America and all of them presently shut in Britain — Hollywood studios aren't willing to release their big movies on the silver screen and risk low box office returns.
Over the past week, the companies behind a heap of high-profile films that had already been delayed at least once over the past year announced that they'd be postponing them yet again. That includes No Time to Die, the latest Bond flick and the last that's set to star Daniel Craig. It was actually the first big movie to reschedule its 2020 release, moving from April to November, then to April 2021. It's now set to reach screens on October 8 this year.
If you were looking forward to more Ghostbusters, you'll need to wait longer for that as well, with the Paul Rudd-starring Ghostbusters: Afterlife making its latest shift to November. The Spider-Man-related Morbius, featuring Jared Leto, moved from October 2021 to January 2022, while The King's Man — the next instalment in the Kingsman franchise — postponed its release from March to August this year.
At the moment, both Black Widow and Fast and Furious 9 are still set to release in the first half of 2021 — on April 29 and May 27 Down Under — but don't be surprised if they move back as well. Actually, as has proven the case for almost a year now, constantly moving release dates is just a regular of pandemic life for the time being.
Some flicks that shouldn't be changing their release plans in Australia and New Zealand: Dune, Godzilla vs Kong, The Suicide Squad, The Matrix 4, In the Heights and the latest Conjuring film. All of the above were produced by Warner Bros, who announced in 2020 that it'd launch movies in cinemas were they could and on streaming platform HBO Max at the same time where the latter is available, enabling it to keep to a schedule and not have to continually push releases back.
New movies are still hitting in cinemas Down Under each week at the moment, of course, and will continue to do so; however, you can probably expect the next few months to be light on big-name flicks — and possibly even longer depending on how the pandemic continues to play out. And, as for whether any of the above repeatedly delayed movies will shift to streaming platforms as Mulan, Soul and Hamilton did in 2020, it doesn't seem overly likely while studios are willing to just keep pushing their dates for them back instead.
To check out the new releases screening in Australian cinemas from this week, check out our weekly rundown and reviews.
Top image: Jonny Cournoyer. © 2019 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved
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