The King’s Man Release Date Gets Pushed Back

The Kingsman: The Secret Service prequel film The King’s Man was expected to help kick off the 2020 year in movies this February – but that’s no longer the case. The King’s Man has had its release date officially pushed back; the film will now release in September of 2020, some seven months after it was supposed to hit theaters. However, it’s the reason for the delaying The King’s Man release that will really rile fans of the franchise: apparently, this is part of a larger release date shuffle that Disney is now doing with 20th Century Fox’s slate of movies, following the Disney-Fox merger.

As Deadline reports:

“Disney has just unloaded a few release date changes to Fox pics and RSVPed a ton of dates for untitled stuff all the way into [20]23…. THE KING’S MAN (FOX) previously dated on 2/14/20 moves to 9/18/20.”

While this may be upsetting to those fans who planned to spend Valentine’s Day 2020 getting a healthy dose of movie action via The King’s Man release, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Disney has never been shy about the fact that there would be shakeups in the slate of films that 20th Century Fox was working on. In fact, back in the summer, a report dropped that Disney was axing an entire slate of Fox films, keeping only half of dozen of a planned 246 projects that were either set for development or already in development at the studio. With that kind of house cleaning taking place, it’s not at all a shock that other films would be shuffled or rearranged to better fit Disney’s updated schedule of releases.

As for the move itself: February used to be a dumping ground for movies studios think will underperform – until films like Black Panther proved that it could be a highly lucrative release window. September, however, is still a pretty dry spell for big movies that can draw a crowd: either Disney is betting that The King’s Man will provide lucrative counterprogramming, or the Mouse House has far less confidence in director Matthew Vaughn‘s prequel than Fox did. As of now, it’ll be awhile before we know which answer it is.

Synopsis: “As a collection of history’s worst tyrants and criminal masterminds gather to plot a war to wipe out millions, one man and his protégé must race against time to stop them.”

The King’s Man will now hit theaters on September 18, 2020.