The COVID-19 shuffle is in full swing once again. After No Time to Die, which is turning into the canary in the coal mine of release date changes, moved its release date to October, a host of studios began shuffling around their schedules as well, including Sony and Universal. Now, 20th Century Studios (under the watchful eye of Disney) is delaying its big blockbuster The King’s Man yet again. The film is now scheduled to land on Aug. 20 instead of March 12. This isn’t the first shift for The King’s Man, which was originally scheduled to come out in November of 2019!
20th Century Studios is shifting more films as well, with the Bob’s Burgers movie off of April 9 but not given it a new release date. Disney has been happy to move its animated features like Soul to streaming, so the film could potentially make its way there or Hulu. They also delayed Ron’s Gone Wrong, about an 11-year-old boy who finds that his robot friend doesn’t work right, from April 23 to Oct. 22.
What’s more interesting is what Disney has not moved yet. The studio seems to be drawing a line at May right now for rescheduling. While it still has Oscar hopeful Nomadland in February and Raya and the Last Dragon coming in March, the former isn’t something that Disney will lose a lot of money on, and the latter is its experiment with releasing in theaters and streaming simultaneously. The truly big movies will currently start back up again in May when Black Widow is set to release and where Free Guy also sits. That still seems somewhat hopeful, and it wouldn’t surprise anyone if more domino effect delays occur.
The entire first quarter of 2021 is looking more and more like the cinematic ghost town that 2020 was, with delays like The King’s Man and Bob’s Burgers.
