Lionsgate delays two of its big release: The Crow remake is still arriving this year, but Saw XI no longer is. More here.
Lionsgate has delayed two of its planned releases, pushing both The Crow and Saw XI out of their respective release slots and further down the line.
Saw XI has been delayed for a full year, with the film being pushed from September 2024 all the way back to September 2025. Given that the project only confirmed that Saw X's Kevin Greutert was returning as director back in February, this one is clearly still in development mode. We haven’t heard any casting news yet, meaning that September release date was simply not doable, especially given that its predecessor, Saw X picked up pretty good reviews.
With the long-running horror series once again on the rise, Lionsgate won’t want to rush out a sequel and damage the series’ newfound momentum.
However, the other named delay may well be for a different reason entirely.
Rupert Sanders’ remake of The Crow was due to release in around eight weeks’ time, but has found its release pushed back into August according to The Hollywood Reporter. As the long-gestating project finally moves closer to release, it has increasingly encountered resistance from fans and the original film’s director who are very protective of the 1994 original and the legacy of its star, the late Brandon Lee who tragically died while making the film.
Alex Proyas, the helmer of the 1994 film has publicly disavowed the film, while online reaction to the remake’s trailer and production images hasn’t been entirely positive. Whether this has spooked Lionsgate or whether this is part of a larger strategy we don’t know, but the reshuffle now means the new version of The Crow will no longer be going up against Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride Or Die.
Instead, in the US the film will be competing with lower-profile releases such as Blink Twice and faith-based title The Forge.
As part of the announcement, we also learned that Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go, starring Hally Berry, will release in September in the US.
Aja is the director of (among other things) 2019’s Crawl, a gloriously trashy film about a deadly alligator. We’ve been looking forward to his collaboration with Berry since it was first announced back in 2022. The film was originally titled Mother Land and is said to be about ‘a mother and her twin sons who have been tormented by an evil spirit for years. When one of the boys questions whether the evil is real, the family’s sacred bond is broken, and it becomes a fight for survival.’
Sounds good to us. We’ll bring you further release date changes as and when we hear them.
