Box Office: ‘Black Widow’ Moves To ‘Eternals’ Slot As ‘Mulan’ Displaces ‘Jungle Cruise’ And ‘Artemis Fowl’ Goes To Disney+

Disney
DIS
just made a bunch of big moves in terms of release date changes. First, Mulan will now open on July 24, 2020, with the Dwayne Johnson/Emily Blunt comic action fantasy Jungle Cruise being delayed a full year to July 30 2021. Bob’s Burgers will open on April 9, 2021, while Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch will now get an Oscar-friendly October 16, 2020 launch pad and Pixar’s Soul remains (for now) on June 19. Meanwhile, Black Widow will take the November 6, 2020 slot previously occupied by Eternals.

The entire MCU, up to a point, is merely moving one release date back, which is really the easiest way to handle this. Eternals will open on February 12, 2021 (also Chinese New Year, natch), with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings moving to May 7, 2021 (the unofficial summer kick-off slot) and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness moving to November 5, 2021. Oh, and Thor: Love and Thunder is now set for February 18, 2022 while Black Panther will remain on May 6, 2022 (the unofficial summer 2022 summer kick-off slot) and Captain Marvel will now open on July 8, 2022.

In non-Marvel news, Kenneth Branagh’s Artemis Fowl will indeed, as speculated, move to Disney+ as a streaming debut as Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy moves to December 11, 2020. Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story will remain in their Christmas season release slots. The Personal History of David Copperfield, Antlers, Woman in the Window and The New Mutants remain undated, with the fifth Indiana Jones movie being tossed to July 29, 2022.

In terms of analysis, just moving the MCU slate “back by one” always made the most sense, as it gave Marvel time to finish up the projects that got stuck in the middle of production stoppages while also making sure that the Disney+ TV shows (especially WandaVision) don’t mess up the continuity of the MCU movies (especially Doctor Strange 2). Total speculation, but I can’t help but wonder if the delay for Indiana Jones 5 may allow Steven Spielberg to step back into the director’s chair.

Artemis Fowl going straight to Disney’s streaming platform is a moderate tragedy, but that was almost certain to happen with coronavirus delaying the big movies and studios having to prioritize the release date for their biggest theatrical offerings. That Disney is pushing Mulan to late July means that they think/hope that theaters will be back in business by then, which may be why Warner Bros.
BWA
hasn’t moved Tenet from July 17 quite yet.

If this all holds, then Tenet will kick off the (late) summer followed by Mulan and then (on August 14) Wonder Woman 1984. And yes, this should end speculation about whether Disney’s two early 2020 biggies (Mulan and Black Widow) will end up on VOD or streaming instead of theaters. It was almost certainly never going to happen, not with films that could still earn as much in theaters as the live-action remake and the Scarlett Johansson prequel might earn in a conventional global theatrical run.

With AMC being tarred with “they’re running out of money” talk, this is a shot in the arm for those concerned about the viability of theatrical moviegoing in a post-coronavirus world. Obviously things could change at any moment, but if the biggest entertainment empire on the planet thinks things will eventually go back to normal, there’s reason to hope. I’m just bummed about having to wait another year for Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt’s Jungle Cruise.