Disney‘s release schedule is once again in fritz amidst the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The studio has taken off the highly anticipated, live-action Mulan from the schedule. Numbers of COVID-19 cases continue to surge in the U.S. market, and new outbreaks are disrupting foreign markets as well.
Mulan was set for an August 21 release date. A new release date has not been announced.
A spokesperson from Walt Disney Studios said in a recent statement: “Over the last few months, it’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis, and today that means pausing our release plans for Mulan as we assess how we can most effectively bring this film to audiences around the world.”
This marks the fourth big-screen delay for Mulan. From the very beginning, the movie was set to debut on March 27 before being pulled when the pandemic started to hit the U.S. Since then, Mulan have been moved to July 24 and then to Aug. 21.
All the upcoming Star Wars films schedule between 2021 and 2027 are also being pushed whole year. What this means is that unfortunately, there won’t be a new Star Wars film in 2022. The announcement also correlates with the delay of the upcoming Avatar sequels.
Both Mulan and Star Wars sequels were expected to be one of the biggest blockbusters this year to bring the box offices out of their slump. This is a huge blow to movie theaters, especially in China, which depends on the $200 million-budgeted title to turn their international market into profits. A handful of Chinese cinemas in areas of low risk COVID-19 cases have reopened at around 2,400 theaters.
However, this also comes with the recent news of AMC Theatres, the world’s biggest movie-theater chain, announcing that the chain will postpone the reopening of its US theaters to “mid-to-late August.” In addition, the top two moviegoing cities Los Angeles and New York City have not brought the coronavirus flare-up under control and therefore still don’t have concrete plans for any cinemas to reopen yet.
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