Box Office: The Summer Movie Season Is Essentially Canceled

If Mulan flees, then the so-called summer movie season will be a handful of small theatrical releases alongside Tenet and (hopefully) A Quiet Place Part II.

Yes, movie theaters are still intending to slowly open over the next month, with the hopes of having something resembling normal business (alongside social distancing and related safety protocols) by mid-to-late July. And yes, there are still movies slotted to open between July 10 and September 4 (Labor Day weekend) in wide theatrical release. But the delay of Warner Bros.’ Tenet to July 31 and, more importantly, the delay of Wonder Woman 1984 to October 2, means that there almost certainly won’t be a summer movie season as we know it. There will be, instead, at best a couple of very big movies that open between July 31 and September 4 alongside a handful of smaller films that will test the waters for the tentpoles yet to come.

As of now, Walt Disney
DIS
’s Mulan is still scheduled for July 24. Heck, I’d argue the reason that Warner Bros. is reissuing Inception on July 17 (the film’s ten-year-anniversary) is partially so that Chis Nolan can still claim “First!” in case Disney doesn’t budge. Offhand, I’d expect Disney to move Mulan to the recently-vacated August 14 slot, as I’m not sure Disney wants to be the canary in the coal mine. That said, Bill & Ted Face the Music moved up a week to August 14, and there’s a case to be made for Disney asserting its dominance as A) Mulan unofficially kicks off the summer, B) the Disney parks open on July 17 and C) the NBA starting up its season in late July with games taking place within Disney World.

That said, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Mulan move not to August 14 but to December 18 instead of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. There may not even be an Oscar season this year, so I’d argue the 20th Century Pictures musical re-adaptation can wait. While the Niki Caro-directed flick would have liked IMAX
IMAX
auditoriums, it’s not a deal-breaker in the way it might have been with “partially shot with IMAX cameras” biggies like Wonder Woman 1984, Tenet, No Time to Die (November 25) and Top Gun: Maverick (December 23). With Wonder Woman 1984 now sent to October 2 (now alongside Paramount
PGRE
’s Without Remorse), whether Mulan opens in July, August or long after may determine whether the 2020 summer movie season even exists. Otherwise, it’s just a handful of small movies alongside Tenet.

All due respect, Solstice Studios’ Russell Crowe road rage thriller Unhinged (now slated for July 10) is not the stuff of which summer blockbuster season is made. Nor is, by modern standards, STX’s “Gerard Butler vs. a comet” disaster flick Greenland, currently slated for July 31 but now certain to get out of Tenet’s way. I’m ever-more convinced that Paramount’s The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On The Run (already delayed from May 22 to August 7) will follow Trolls: World Tour and Scoob! to VOD. Searchlight just slotted The Personal History of David Copperfield for limited release on August 14, while Bill & Ted Face the Music (a sequel to a film that earned $38 million back in 1991) is now opening on August 14, leaving Lionsgate’s horror flick Antebellum unopposed on August 21.

The New Mutants is being released on August 28, while Sony’s video game adaptation Monster Hunter (September 4) is more about China (where Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter earned $159 million of its $312 million global cume in 2017) than North America. That leaves (if they remain) Lionsgate’s Liam Neeson thriller Honest Thief and Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II for Labor Day. The Emily Blunt/Cillian Murphy horror sequel was tracking for a $60 million debut when it was pulled from release back in March. If Disney’s Mulan flees, this summer will be, at best, eight weeks of small movies alongside Tenet in late July and A Quiet Place Part II in early September. That’s not a summer movie season. That’s a stop-gap to keep theaters alive until October or November.

Honestly, if the theaters themselves weren’t in such peril, I’d argue just shifting everything intended for this summer into either the October-to-December 2020 season or into next summer. Warner Bros. has already “lost” The Matrix 4 and The Batman, while both Disney’s Shang-Chi and Universal’s Jurassic World: Dominion may or may not make their summer 2021 release dates. We may end up in a skewed situation where this summer is essentially a desperate gasp for survival while next summer ends up, following a robust late 2020 and early 2021, comparatively halfhearted due to the big movies being delayed (since social distancing led to closed theaters and work stoppages for in-production features) to late 2021 or sometime in 2022. We may not see a return to “normal” until closer to 2022 than 2021.