Last month, Sony Pictures had postponed / shuffled many of its highly anticipated films like ‘Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse’ and ‘Kraven the Hunter’, etc because of the ongoing actors’ and writers’ strikes happening in the US. As per the latest update, another reputed production house Warner Bros. has delayed a big-ticket film during the strikes.
Denis Villeneuve’s eagerly anticipated Dune sequel ‘Dune: Part Two’ has been postponed from its previously scheduled November 2023 release to 15th March 2024. The film’s delay has apparently caused another film ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ to be delayed from 15th March 2024 to 12th April 2024 in order to avoid a clash.
Moreover, the animated movie ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’ has also been postponed from 12th April 2024 to 13th December 2024. Incidentally, Sony’s ‘The Karate Kid’ reboot movie is all set to release on 13th December next year. Although their target audience is entirely different.
However, as of now, Warner Bros. has not announced any release date changes for its December 2023 theatrical releases namely ‘Wonka’, James Wan’s DC superhero flick ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’, and ‘The Color Purple’. These three movies are still expected to release on their previously scheduled release dates of 15th December 2023, 20th December 2023, and 25th December 2023, respectively. So, until now, the speculations about these December releases getting delayed haven’t turned out to be true so far.
Coming back to the theatrical release delay for ‘Dune: Part Two’, the move makes sense because the big-ticket film needs to be promoted in a big way in order to perform well at the box-office. And for that to happen, the film’s cast, especially its younger members like Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh and Austin Butler would be needed to use their star power and social media popularity in an optimum way. Until then, let’s just hope that the demands pertaining to the writers’ and actors’ strikes are met soon so that there are no further theatrical release delays for the Hollywood film industry.