Fans Are Petitioning For Marvel To Change The ‘Ant-Man & The Wasp’ Release Date In The UK

Marvel fans are petitioning to move up the United Kingdom release date of Marvel Studios‘ Ant-Man and the Wasp, which opens there August 3 — almost a month after the Ant-Man sequel’s domestic debut.

The petition, launched by Adam Khan, has garnered more than 1,300 signatures of its 1,500 goal since its launch four weeks ago.

“How can we go a month without spoilers?” the petition reads. “You can watch the World Cup and watch a movie as well.”

The World Cup is fingered as the culprit for the delay, with the major sports event culminating in its live final July 15.

“The worry for film distributors is that audiences will be caught up in the tournament,” Charles Gant, film journalist and box office expert for Guardian and Screen International, told Yahoo.

“So it’s easier to play safe and not date your film at this time, especially during the group stage, when all the qualifying nations are competing.”

The UK’s release date is the third-latest opening for the movie, just ahead of Italy’s August 14 opening and Japan’s August 31 start date.

Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s month-later UK debut also distances itself from Disney’s other major summer release, Pixar’s Incredibles 2, which opens June 15 in the US and July 13 in the UK — a release date timed to coincide with the start of the UK’s school holidays.

The Disney-Pixar blockbuster-to-be then has three weeks of breathing room in the UK before Ant-Man racks up what will likely be a large box office.

Shifting up Ant-Man‘s UK release date to align it with its US counterpart would mean Disney cannibalizes its own box office in the UK, as Ant-Man and the Wasp and Incredibles 2 would then open with just one week separating the two instead of the wide berth it has now.

That later date also means Ant-Man steers clear of Universal’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which debuts there June 6, over two weeks ahead of its June 22 US debut. Its predecessor, 2015’s Jurassic World, peaked as the third highest-grossing film of all time and remains the fifth highest-grossing film worldwide.

Earlier this year, Disney shifted the release of crossover epic Avengers: Infinity War forward one week from its original May 4 release date for a mostly-simultaneous worldwide bow April 27.

That move helped contain the film’s many major spoilers and saw the blockbuster land the biggest global opening of all time.

Slide 1

Slide 2

Slide 3

Slide 4

Slide 5

Slide 6

Slide 7

Slide 8

Slide 9

Ant-Man and the Wasp opens July 6 in the United States and August 3 in the UK.