With the two very popular films dropping on the third week of December, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and ‘Matrix Ressurections’ will be our first international box office clash since the pandemic started. Theatre owners around the globe have been waiting for a film like this to open in the cinema halls and now, they have got two. We can only imagine that December is going to be a crazy time for theatrical releases, especially Hollywood movies.
India has been one of the most affected countries in the world, especially looking at the number of Covid-19 cases that happened during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the country has started to fully open up but only a few states have started to open theatres. With many theatres having been closed for a period of at least 4 months, the theatrical releases of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and ‘Matrix Ressurections’ are exactly what they have been waiting for.
We expect Bollywood and other regional film industries to follow suit and start to prepare release dates around the release dates of these films. While they wouldn’t want to compete with these mammoth films, we still expect films to drop by the beginning of December, or just after the New Year, so as not to “splash” multiple blockbuster films in one go. Then again, who knows – we could probably face the likes of ‘Marakkar: The Lion of The Arabian Sea’, ‘K.G.F: Chapter 2‘ and ‘RRR’ – and they could all release during the same weekend. Now, that’s a thought. We will have to wait and see.
‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ will premier on theatres on 17th December 2021, while ‘Matrix Ressurections’ will release theatrically worldwide (as well) on 22nd December 2021.