Black Widow Looking For New Release Date

Black Widow is reportedly seeking out a new release date as Disney and Marvel Studios want to push the next big scheduled blockbuster title further down the line. Disney is now being dubbed as “likely” to delay Black Widow, a move which comes after Tenet tested the box office waters as the first major title release following the theatrical shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic and did not deliver opening weekend numbers close to what it would have under normal circumstances. Warner Bros. reacted by moving Wonder Woman 1984 back to Christmas, leaving no major titles between now and the scheduled date of November 6 date of Black Widow. At the time of publishing, Black Widow is still scheduled for November 6, 2020.

“Around 70% of U.S. cinemas have reopened, but many are having trouble attracting audiences,” Variety says in its report. “Compounding issues is the fact that major domestic markets such as New York City and Los Angeles have yet to allow cinemas to reopen. Theater owners hoped that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet would usher in a return to moviegoing, but with so many major markets shuttered and consumers worried about coronavirus, the film has made a disappointing $29 million in North America after two weeks of release.”

The bigger problem with delaying Black Widow for Marvel Studios comes in releasing the rest of their titles. The franchise thrives on its interconnected nature which brings characters from different titles into stories for others. However, as titles like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and WandaVision seek to release on Disney+ after The Mandalorian‘s second season and movies including Eternals and Shang-Chi are both slated to follow Black Widow, the interconnected nature of the franchise could force everything to be push back as a whole. When Marvel first moved Black Widow back from its original date of May 2020, the entire franchise’s movie titles pushed back to the next film’s date.

Disney is now considering shifting its upcoming Soul movie to Disney+. The studio previously gave users the opportunity to watch Mulan through their Disney+ subscriptions for an added fee of $29.99. The film earned almost half of what it was projected to earn in its original opening weekend through the Premier Access option. This is not expected to be an option for Black Widow.

Whether or not Black Widow finds a date which will prevent the other Marvel titles from being delayed remains to be seen.