Disney Delays Mulan and Two Other Movies…But Not the One You’d Expect
Disney Pushes the Release Date for Three Projects
When it rains, it pours for new Disney CEO, Bob Chapek. Only hours after announcing the temporary closure of Disneyland, Chapek’s staff just made another hard call.
Walt Disney Studios has delayed Mulan and two other films. Realistically, they didn’t have a choice, either. Many Disney films do extremely well overseas, as I recently discussed on MarvelBlog.
Meanwhile, in North America, the fear of a pandemic will depress film ticket sales. Faced with a losing proposition, Disney correctly decided to delay Mulan at what I may only describe as the last moment. The film has already had a world premiere and was previously scheduled to open on March 27th.
Instead, those plans are on hold indefinitely. Disney hasn’t even confirmed another release date for the project. The Hollywood Reporter suggests that the film will come out later in 2020, presumably after everyone has stopped coughing and sneezing.
The Other Delayed Titles
Disney has also delayed a Marvel release, although not the one you’d expect. New Mutants, the upcoming superhero horror project, is also off the schedule again. It’s not the first time the movie has lost a release date, as filming wrapped for the first time in September in 2017. It was a Fox project at the time, one that Disney inherited when it bought the company’s assets.
Mulan will be fine. The fate of New Mutants is less certain, as I’ll discuss in an upcoming Know Your Marvels article on MarvelBlog…that now needs a bit of rewriting.
The third title that Disney has delayed is Antlers. It’s a science fiction horror film starring former Mouseketeer, Keri Russell.
Disney didn’t have significant box office expectations for Antlers. So, its delay is only inconvenient to fans of director Scott Cooper, whose last release, Hostiles, garnered a lot of acclaim. Of course, the director is best known for Crazy Heart, which I highly recommend.
What about Black Widow?
For now, Disney has elected to keep Black Widow’s release on May 1st. The studio will monitor the COVID-19 pandemic over the next few weeks and make a call later. That’s the right approach at the moment.