It may be 2021, but for the movie theater biz, it’s like nothing has changed. Sadly, the arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine has not been met with great speed in getting it into people’s arms, and so the movie box office numbers haven’t come close to bouncing back. The last year has seen studios shuffle release dates repeatedly, moving some of their biggest films out of 2020 and into 2021 for exactly this moment, but they may need to move at least one more time to get it right.
According to a Variety report, early blockbuster films such as Cinderella, The King’s Man, No Time to Die, and Morbius are “very unlikely” to stick to their current release dates. Cinderella, which stars Camila Cabello, arrives in February and is the first major test for the studios. However, with nearly 65% of theaters still closed throughout the country, that could prove quite a challenge.
In the case of No Time to Die, it may have already been pushed from its April release date and into November. Dutch theater owner Carlo Lambregts said in a recent interview that MGM has already postponed the James Bond film, it just hasn’t been made public yet.
Furthermore, films such as F9, Black Widow, Godzilla vs. Kong (which is having other issues to deal with), Cruella, and Infinite could also see their dates shift or move to digital if there isn’t a drastic improvement.
So what happens now? Well, we wait for confirmation of the moves, I guess. But if true, and we see another wave of release date changes all at once, movie theaters are going to be in an even greater world of hurt than before, and just when things were expected to look up.
