Things look bleak for movie theaters and movie studios in 2020.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused several movies to move their release dates due to theaters being shut down until the pandemic is somehow under control.
Now, it seems like the studios are believing that the pandemic will keep things closed even longer than expected. The studio is starting to move movies out of July spots, which makes it seem like the entire summer blockbuster season is a wash.
Morbius and Ghostbusters: Afterlife release dates
The Wrap reports that two of the big late-summer blockbusters have been postponed.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is supposed to bring back the original Ghostbusters in some role, was moved from July until March 2021.
Morbius, the next movie in the Sony-Marvel Spider-Man Universe, was also moved from July to March 2021.
Moving Morbius also makes it look like Venom 2 will get bumped back as well with more dominos falling.
The same thing should happen with Marvel.
Earlier this month, Black Widow was moved. That might have an effect on the next Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that were coming, including Eternals and the next Doctor Strange movie.
Black Widow was moved following the studios also moving the next James Bond movie, No Time to Die, and the next Fast & Furious movie, F9.
Other movie delays
On top of Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Morbius getting moved to 2021, studios today announced that Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway was moving from August to January 15, 2021.
That makes it seem like the movie studios are expecting the shutdown of theaters due to the coronavirus pandemic to last well into late summer.
Uncharted, the Sony movie that is itself an adaptation of the popular PlayStation videogame, was also moved. The film, which stars Spider-Man’s Tom Holland and Antonio Banderas has been moved from March 2021 to October 2021 to make room for Morbius and Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
The Tom Hanks war movie Greyhound was supposed to come out in June and another untitled Spider-Man spin-off movie scheduled to hit in October 2021 were both removed from the schedule.
The removal of Morbius and Ghostbusters: Afterlife also followed Universal moving Minions: The Rise of Gru out of a July spot as well.
As far as Sony is concerned, they appear to be throwing in the towel for the entire summer 2020 movie season.
China reportedly tried to reopen theaters last week, but people were too scared to come out, so they were closed again by the government for now.
At the moment, the only three big movies left coming in July are Tenet, the Christopher Nolan film, the animated Bob’s Burgers: The Movie, and the long-anticipated Bill & Ted Face the Music.