Well, it’s official: 2020 will be the first year since 2009 not to have a new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Earlier this month, Warner Bros. released Christopher Nolan’s spy thriller Tenet into theaters, and the results were…meh. It didn’t do badly, exactly, but with many movie theaters still closed thanks to the coronavirus and people wary of going to the ones that are open, it wasn’t the smash success the studio was hoping for, and it has other movers and shakers in Hollywood worried.
Disney already released Mulan, one of its big tentpole movies for the year, directly to streaming. Now, it’s pushing back the release dates of several more movies, per Variety. Here’s the list:
- Black Widow: Nov. 6, 2019 to May 7, 2020
- West Side Story: Dec. 18, 2020 to Dec. 10, 2021
- Eternals: Feb. 12, 2021 to Nov. 5, 2021
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: May 7, 2021 to July 9, 2021
- Death on the Nile: Oct. 23, 2020 to Dec. 18, 2020
The Marvel films are the big ones. Black Widow has been on the edge for a while, and considering the state of things the options were either push it back or release it straight to streaming. And because of how interconnected the Marvel movies are, moving that back may have necessitated pushing back other films like Eternals and Shang-Chi.
This also means that 2020 will be the first year in a long time that has no new Marvel movies. It’s a touch pill to swallow, but probably for the best, as Eternals star Kumail Nanjiani suggested: “Marvel made the right & responsible decision,” he said. “There’s a pandemic. Nothing is more important than health & lives. I can’t tell ppl to go to a movie theater until I feel safe going to one. Take care of yourselves. I promise it’ll be worth the wait!”
Not everything is getting moved. Soul, the new Pixar movie, is keeping its November 20 release date, so we’ll see how that goes. And there are a couple movies that were actually moved up on the schedule, although admittedly they’re a ways off: horror film The Empty Man will debut on Oct. 23, 2020 instead of Dec. 4, 2020, and spy movie The King’s Man will land on Feb. 12, 2021 rather than Feb. 26, 2021.
And now we wait for the rest of the delay announcements…
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