Sony Pictures has announced what is perhaps the most sweeping set of schedule changes to all of its upcoming tentpole films amid the coronavirus pandemic crisis, pushing back the release dates of essentially everything on their calendar in the process. That includes bumping the release date of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Morbius, Uncharted, Peter Rabbit 2 and many more besides.
Ghostbusters, from Jason Reitman, son of original series director Ivan Reitman, has a new release date of March 5, 2021, while Morbius is now March 19, 2021. Videogame adaptation Uncharted, which stars Tom Holland, is now scheduled for Oct. 8, 2021. Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway is now Jan. 15, 2021. One of the only films moving forward rather than back, meanwhile? Kevin Hart’s Fatherhood, which was originally scheduled for Jan. 15, 2021, but is moving to Oct. 23, 2020.
Several films were also taken off the schedule indefinitely, such as the Tom Hanks WWII drama Greyhound, and an untitled Sony/Marvel project.
These sweeping changes reinforce the notion that major film studios aren’t expecting American cinemas to re-open anytime soon. In addition to all the moves at Sony, Warner Bros. also pushed back Wonder Woman 1984 to Aug. 14, 2020, which is a date that may still be optimistic. That studio has also taken several films off the schedule entirely, including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights and the animated Scooby-Doo film Scoob. They join Disney, which likewise removed the likes of Mulan and Black Widow from their release schedule.
One has to wonder, once the virus recedes, how these release dates will ultimately shake out. We could be looking at quite the bottleneck of studios fighting for those initial theater dollars.