NEWS FLASH-Dune, The Batman and More Films Delayed

Warner Bros. announced that Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune adaptation has been delayed from December 17th to October 1st 2021.

This announcement got people expecting more delay news, as October 1st is the same release date as The Batman.

Well, it was.

Sure enough, WB confirmed a slew of release date delays and changes following on from Dune’s delay.

The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader, will now be released March 4th 2022.

The Matrix 4, which recently finished filming ahead of schedule, has been moved up from April 1st 2022 to December 22nd 2021.

One movie that just cannot stop zipping between release dates is The Flash, which has been delayed (again) from June 3rd 2022 to November 4th 2022, 4 years after its initial 2018 release date

This new release date clashes with Shazam 2: Fury of the Gods which original held that release spot and now will be released June 2nd 2023.

Other WB properties such as The Rock’s Black Adam and a Minecraft movie have been completely removed from the release calendar, assumedly so the executives can announce new dates at a more stable time.

The reasoning for this release date shuffle has been production delays, with The Batman being delayed recently with Robert Pattinson testing positive from COIVD-19.

More likely, WB saw the middling release of their film Tenet and didn’t want to see other big budget movies bomb like it financial and so had to move Dune and in doing so caused the domino effect.

Now only Wonder Woman 1984, Pixar’s Soul, and Free Guy are the remaining big budget movies of 2020, with Dune and Bond’s No Time To Die now removed.

There are talks of Soul being released on Disney+ in the same model as Mulan, under a premium price for members but nothing confirmed yet.

Give it another few weeks of continuing devastation in the US due to the virus, and Wonder Woman ’84 and Free Guy might also be gone.

Following No Time To Die’s delay, theatre chains are feeling the brunt of the impact with Cineworld closing all their theatres in the UK and US.

With MGM Studios, the studio behind No Time To Die, taking the fall as the studio that “killed cinemas”, other studios may now feel emboldened to pull their movies without the backlash of hurting cinemas anymore than they already have.