Hollywood Prepares to Delay Another Slew of Blockbusters

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Nobody expected mass immunization overnight, but with vaccinations being administered at a crawl in the U.S., it now looks like Warner Bros. may have been forward-thinking. Numerous films remain on the release calendar for early 2021, yet cases of the virus in many areas are higher than ever and approximately 65% of U.S. theaters — including those in popular markets like New York and Los Angeles —  remain closed. Getting back to the movies in any normal fashion seems as unrealistic today as it did last March when cinemas across the nation were shuttered.

To be sure, the majority of potential blockbusters have already been postponed to mid-summer or later. But there are a handful of films scheduled for the first quarter of the year: Sony’s “Cinderella” starring Camila Cabello (Feb. 5), Disney and 20th Century’s “The King’s Man” (March 12) and Jared Leto’s superhero thriller “Morbius” also from Sony (March 19), to name a few. These seem very unlikely to keep their theatrical release dates, at least without embracing some kind of hybrid digital or video-on-demand debut.

Even in traditional times, the stretch between January and March is kind of a cinematic dumping ground. So it’s not entirely unexpected that the current release calendar doesn’t pick up in a meaningful way until May, with the debuts of Disney and Marvel’s “Black Widow” (May 7), Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “Godzilla vs Kong” (May 21), Ryan Reynolds’ “Free Guy” from 20th Century Studios (May 21), Paramount’s “Infinite” starring Mark Wahlberg (May 28), Disney’s “Cruella” with Emma Stone (May 28) and Universal’s “F9” (May 28). But many of these titles are expected to shift as well if conditions don’t drastically improve in the next month or so.

Hollywood players will continue to take different approaches to operating and finding the best way to reach audiences during the pandemic. Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal appear more primed to ride out the next few months, with contingency plans that range from day-and-date releases on streaming services to accelerated premium video-on-demand windows. Neither Sony nor Paramount have a streaming service ready to offload titles, so those companies will probably continue to delay release dates or sell their movies to platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Paramount has auctioned off most of its upcoming movies and doesn’t have anything on the horizon until “A Quiet Place Part II” on April 23, which it has no plans to sell.

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