By 2020 has become the year when you wonder just what kind of depressing news you’re going to wake up to every morning. In the grand scheme of things, movie delays aren’t that big of a deal, but they’re a sobering reminder that no matter how much a studio like Sony or Universal may want to get audiences back into theaters, it won’t be happening anytime soon.
The untitled Spider-Man sequel was set to release on November 5, 2021, but has been delayed a month to December 17, 2021, in order to accommodate for Disney’s adjusted release schedule. It’s unclear how this will affect the rest of the MCU, which is still on track to have Black Widow release this November, though the likelihood of that release date staying is anybody’s guess. Realistically, a delay of one month isn’t too bad for Spider-Man, but because of how thoroughly planned the MCU is, expect all of the other MCU movies to now have their releases shuffled around.
As for Universal’s upcoming features A Quiet Place Part II and Top Gun: Maverick, they have both been delayed out of 2020 entirely. A Quiet Place II is now slated for April 23, 2021, and Top Gun: Maverick will release on July 2, 2021. If these delays stay as they are, then they would have effectively been delayed for more than a year each before being released. This is probably not too good for A Quiet Place Part II, which already had a huge marketing push back in March under the pretense that it would release then. Now it’s going to have to have an entirely new marketing campaign, which will make it much more difficult for the movie to break even or make a profit.
As it stands, all three movies are still set to release theatrically with no plans for a VOD release. Give it another week and every studio will be shuffling their release schedules yet again because no one can predict how long this virus will last.
