Oh, you thought you were going to get to watch Dune this year? You naive fool, this is 2020, where chaos reigns and the spice does not flow.
Thanks to COVID-19, a number of much-anticipated blockbusters have been pushed back to more lucrative time slots, since many of the world’s cinemas aren’t fully up and functional yet (and who in their right mind wants to sit in a poorly-ventilated room full of strangers right now?). Also, completing production has been extra tricky with all the added safety precautions. Yes, there may be more important things to worry about, but if ever there was a year where we all could do with some epic escapism featuring spicy space worms, it’s 2020.
Here are a few of the re-wrangled release dates (which will probably change again at some point in the future, because 2020):
- No Time to Die – was November 2020, now 2 April 2021
- Black Widow – was November 2020, now 7 May 2021
- Dune – was December 2020, now 1 October 2021
- Jurassic World: Dominion – was June 2021, now 10 June 2022
- The Batman – was October 2021, now 4 March 2022
- Thor: Love and Thunder – was November 2021, now 11 February 2022
- Avatar 2 – was December 2021, now December 2022 (also probably never)
In a bit of a twist, The Matrix 4 is defying the trend and is actually releasing sooner than expected. The next instalment in the Matrix franchise was originally set to release in April 2022, but now we can expect it on 22 December 2021. However, nobody actually asked for The Matrix 4 to exist, so it doesn’t count.
So, what can we look forward to coming out this year? Well, for now, we can all ugly-cry along to Pixar’s Soul on 20 November and Wonder Woman 1984 is set to release on 25 December 2020; just in time to save Christmas.