The strike may be over and actors are rapidly aiming to return to production, but Disney has still delayed the releases of its MCU titles intended for next year. As it stands, “Deadpool 3” is currently the only Marvel movie slated to open in 2024.
“Captain America: Brave New World,” and “Thunderbolts,” both intended for a release in 2024, will now open in 2025. “Blade,” meant to open early in 2025, now won’t hit theaters until November of that year. Barry Jenkins’ “Mufasa: The Lion King” has also been delayed on Disney’s theatrical release slate.
While “Deadpool 3’s” release date was widely assumed to have already moved, Disney has now made it official, currently leaving the first weekend of the summer wide open on the theatrical calendar. It now opens July 26, 2024.
“Captain America: Brave New World” will now move to February 14, 2025, “Thunderbolts” takes the July 25, 2025 slot, and “Blade” will release November 7, 2025.
“The Marvels,” the latest title in the MCU, opens in previews tonight.
The date changes come not long after Disney previously pushed “Snow White” and Pixar’s “Elio” — and pulled “Magazine Dreams” off its release slate altogether. Save for an unannounced placeholder in April, the next Disney movie to open in 2024 is “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” on May 24, 2024.
Bob Iger in Disney’s earnings call on Nov. 8 said that the company wants to focus on quality over quantity, and the company is even planning on slashing the content spend by $2 billion next year. But Marvel especially has come under scrutiny for superhero fatigue, and it doesn’t hurt to space out content to avoid overload.
But save for 2020, it’s almost unthinkable to not have several MCU titles in a single year, and movie theaters will surely be feeling the pinch without several guaranteed blockbusters on the release calendar.
Iger had also said that if the SAG-AFTRA strike didn’t end soon, all studios would be forced to reassess their content slates for 2024, notably in the summer. “Deadpool 3,” which brings Ryan Reynolds’ profane, R-rated superhero and Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine into the MCU, was roughly halfway through production when the actors strike began, and it will be the first in line to restart.
The strikes have already wreaked havoc on the theatrical slate. “Dune Part 2” was meant to open this month, then got delayed until March 15, 2024. Paramount pushed the eighth “Mission: Impossible” movie by a full year to summer 2025. And if you were looking to Sony for a Marvel fix, “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse” is still without a release date, but with the strike now over, it could get a date very soon once actors are able to get back into the studio to record ADR. Sony also pushed the R-rated “Kraven the Hunter” until Labor Day weekend 2024.
Disney did release a trailer for “Inside Out 2” this morning, and it is sticking to its release date on June 14, 2024.
