As goes No Time to Die, so goes pretty much the entire pre-summer theatrical slate.
As goes No Time to Die, so goes pretty much the entire pre-summer theatrical slate. MGM announced last night that the 25th official James Bond movie is moving from April 2 to October 8, or nearly two years after its originally planned debut of November 8,2019 (back when Danny Boyle was still attached to direct). This is no surprise, as it’s why Warner Bros. moved Godzilla Vs. Kong up from May 21 to March 26. And from the flood of release date changes that followed, it was clear that Hollywood was waiting for James Bond to signal that the first few months of the year were indeed not safe for big-scale theatrical exhibition. Sony moved Ghostbusters: Afterlife from June 11 (ironically the tenth anniversary of J.J. Abrams’ 80’s Amblin homage Super 8) to November 11, while they pushed Peter Rabbit: The Runaway from April 2 to June 11. Kay Cannon’s Camila Cabello-starring Cinderella has been moved from February 5 to July 16 (concurrently with Space Jam: A New Legacy) and pushed Uncharted from July 16 to February 11, 2022. The Tom Holland/Mark Wahlberg video game adaptation will at least get IMAX screens for its trouble. Oh, and with No Time to Die moving to October 8, Jared Leto’s Morbius shifted to January 21, 2022, where it too will get IMAX screens. Meanwhile, Universal delayed Tom Hanks’ BIOS from April 16 to August 13 and then proceeded to shift Blumhouse’s Nobody from February 26 to April 2, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho from April 23 to October 22 and Michael Bay’s Ambulance to February 18,2022. Oh, and last but not least, Disney pushed Matthew Vaughn’s World War I-set prequel The Kings Man to August 20 alongside (at the moment) Lionsgate’s The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and Paramount’s Paw Patrol movie. They undated Bob’s Burgers and pushed Ron’s Gone Wrong from April 23 to October 22. In better news, they added four Searchlight titles into theatrical release for the year, namely The Night House (July 16), Jessica Chastain’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye (September 24), the long-delayed Antlers (October 29) and Guillermo del Toro’s all-star horror fantasy Nightmare Alley (December 3). In a skewed irony, in terms of films heading to theaters in 2021, the studio offering the most product this year is actually Walt Disney.
