As theaters shutter and big studio films postpone wide theatrical releases, indie and arthouse films are trying their best to navigate the waters of the coronavirus outbreak. Like big banner titles, many indie films that were set to release this weekend are opting to delay their debuts, while a handful are opting for a digital
Release Dates
Paramount’s hit winter feature Sonic the Hedgehog, which charted the best opening ever for a videogame movie at $100M WW, will be available for digital purchase on March 31, followed by a 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and for rental on demand or disc on May 19. The pic was part of the studio’s turnaround under 20th
Not just one Paramount movie is getting postponed this morning, but we heard that the studio’s April 3 action comedy The Lovebirds is also shifting following today’s big news that A Quiet Place Part II is not opening on Friday, March 20. Lovebirds, directed by Michael Showalter, was to make its world premiere at SXSW. Some time before
Sony’s Tom Hanks World War II movie Greyhound is jumping from its May 8 weekend to June 12, as a means to tee off before Father’s Day weekend which is during the weekend of June 19-21. I hear the pic’s rescheduling has nothing to do with coronavirus fears which are weighing on many distribs’ minds, rather
Sony has dated Melanie Laurent’s feature adaptation of Kristin Hannah’s international bestseller The Nightingale for December 25, 2020. With the Christmas debut of Greta Gerwig’s PG-rated Little Women last year, Sony saw a multitude of women flock to that movie, which grossed more than $203 million worldwide and earned six Oscar noms, winning one for Costume Design.
Sony’s Escape Room 2 is jumping its release date from Aug. 14 to Wednesday Dec. 30 this year. Adam Robitel, who directed the first $9M production, returns to helm here. The first movie last year grossed $57M stateside, and $155.7M WW with 22% of that latter number coming from China. Originally, Escape Room 2 was dated on April
Warner Bros has just dated John Lee Hancock’s cop thriller The Little Things for a January 29, 2021 release. The distributor already had the date reserved with an untitled film. The movie, which starts Denzel Washington and Rami Malek, is now going up against Paramount’s animated monster-wrestling movie Rumble on that date. The pic, written by Hancock,
Jurassic World 3 director Colin Trevorrow on Tuesday announced Day 1 of shooting for the Universal sequel, plus the pic’s title: Jurassic World: Dominion. It’s Trevorrow’s second time directing the dinosaur franchise, after J.A. Bayona took over for the second movie, 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Trevorrow is also exec producing with Steven Spielberg. Frank Marshall
So, what happens now? With the three-and-a-half-weeks early, lowest-rated Oscar show in the bag, the movies and those who love them are caught in an unaccustomed February vacuum. Normally, there would be cocktails, canapés, and the whispers of publicists looking for last-minute advantage over competitors. But Sunday’s Academy Awards implosion—what else to call a show
As promised during the Lionsgate earnings call on Thursday, Lionsgate has set a release date for their long-awaited sci-fi Daisy Ridley–Tom Holland movie Chaos Walking which is the post-MLK weekend frame of January 22, 2021. There are no wide entries scheduled on that date. The pic will follow in the wake of Guy Ritchie’s Jason
Lionsgate has set a March 19, 2021 wide-release date for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the meta action comedy that stars Nicolas Cage as a version of himself. Tom Gormican is directing the film based on the screenplay he wrote with Kevin Etten. Kevin Turen is producing. The plot: Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial
A couple weeks after Deadline reported that Ruben Fleischer was atop the list to direct Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg in Sony Pictures’ Uncharted, and the race was on to keep the pic on track to shoot before the next installment of Holland’s Spider-Man, the studio changed the release date of the Columbia Pictures actioner.
Focus Features said Wednesday that it has set a May 29, 2020 domestic release date for Irresistible, the new film written and directed by Jon Stewart. The political satire, produced by Stewart and Plan B Entertainment, revolves around what happens when a small Wisconsin town becomes the main attraction of our political circus. After the
EXCLUSIVE: Hector Babenco’s final film, My Hindu Friend was originally released in Brazil (where it is known as Meu Amigo Hindu) in 2015 and made its international premiere at the Montréal World Film Festival the following year where the film’s star Willem Dafoe was honored with a Best Actor award. After Babenco died in 2016, the film never
UPDATED, 12:33 PM: Amid a slew of changes to its release calendar today, Warner Bros has bumped up the theatrical debut of its Mortal Kombat by seven weeks to Martin Luther King Day weekend in 2021. The action reboot had been set to hit screens on March 5 that year and now will launch on January 15.
Warner Bros has set a slew of release dates for its movies next year and beyond, including dating the fourth installment of The Matrix for May 21, 2021, and its DC superhero stand-alone The Flash for July 1, 2022. Among the 12 titles in the mix as the studio lines up its slate for 2020
Focus Features has set an August 21 release date for Let Him Go, a thriller starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane from writer-director-producer Thomas Bezucha. In the film based on the novel by Larry Watson, retired sheriff George Blackledge (Costner) and his wife Margaret (Lane) leave their Montana ranch after the loss of their son to rescue
Disney/Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker has been set for a December 20 China release, in step with domestic. This marks a change from the saga’s recent holiday installments which have each bowed in the Middle Kingdom in January, after initial rollout elsewhere. The official Star Wars Weibo account posted a Chinese-subtitled trailer today
2ND UPDATE: Sylvester Stallone’s MGM thriller Samaritan is heading to Dec. 11, 2020. I hear that the actual reason for the move was that the Stallone film needs more time to be completed. That’s one week after the first weekend in December which following Black Friday weekend is a no man’s zone for wide entries. Samaritan
Warner Bros/Legendary’s Godzilla vs. Kong is heading to Nov. 20, 2020. Warner Bros. already had the pre-Thanksgiving frame on hold for a major release, and well, this is it. The pic directed by Adam Wingard will be released in 3D and Imax. After the under-performance of the second film this past summer, Godzilla: King of the Monsters at $110.5M
The China release of Lulu Wang’s indie breakout The Farewell has been delayed. The Sundance hit was due in theaters on Friday, November 22, but was abruptly pulled from the schedule this week. There’s been no official word as to the reasons behind the change, although it is believed the family dramedy will get a
Refresh for updates Disney has just unloaded a few release date changes to Fox pics and RSVPed a ton of dates for untitled stuff all the way into 23. The list is below. We’re still digesting this. Let’s break this down by years. 2020 –Matthew Vaugn’s The King’s Man, which is already being promoted in
The New Line movie, Black Adam, based on the DC comics property will hit cinemas on Wednesday Dec. 22, 2021, five days after Fox’s Avatar sequel on Dec. 17. Pic is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who recently directed Johnson in Disney’s upcoming Jungle Cruise. Black Adam will open up against Sony’s Hotel Transylvania 4, Universal’s feature adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked, and —
Paramount is putting its Rugrats movie in timeout. The studio said today that it has pulled the Nick TV adaptation from its schedule after originally setting a January 29, 2021, release date. Taking over that weekend slot is Rumble, the toon from Paramount Animation and WWE Studios that is set in a world where monster wrestling is a global
Paramount and Skydance Media already had Dec. 25, 2020 reserved on the release schedule and it’s being designated to the Chris McKay-directed The Tomorrow War starring Chris Pratt. Pic, scripted by Zach Dean, follows a man who is drafted to fight in a future war where the fate of humanity relies on his ability to confront his
Fox Searchlight has announced that its pre-TIFF acquisition, Armando Ianucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield, will be opening on May 8. Pic reps Iannucci’s third outing as director, after directing the Oscar-nominated In The Loop and The Death of Stalin, and also created the award-winning HBO series Veep. Iannucci adapted the film with frequent collaborator Simon Blackwell from the Charles
Sony said Friday that the sequel to its Oscar-winning animated pic Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse will hit theaters on April 8, 2022. The studio also said that another Sony Pictures Animation project, the musical adventure tale Vivo with original songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda, is being pushed back five months to April 2021. The original Marvel/Columbia
Frozen II, the sequel to the highest-grossing animated film of all time, has secured a day-and-date China release set for November 22. A new Chinese one-sheet was posted on Disney’s official Weibo account today (check it out below). The studio begins offshore rollout on November 20 with domestic, and now China, starting two days later.
EXCLUSIVE: Brazil’s official Oscar entry, Invisible Life will open Dec. 20 via Amazon Studios. The tropical melodrama stars Carol Duarte, Julia Stockler and Fernanda Montenegro and is set in Rio de Janeiro, 1950. Eurídice and Guida are two inseparable sisters living at home with their conservative parents. Although immersed in a traditional life, each one nourishes a dream:
Paramount Pictures is dealing with its Monster Problems, moving the release of the coming-of-age tale starring Dylan O’Brien back by six weeks. The pic about a young man living in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by monsters had been set for March 6 but now will unspool April 17. We hear the move was made because