With Hollywood strikes ongoing, Sony has decided to push back release dates for some of its highest-profile projects.
We’ve already seen Disney push back some of its upcoming slate, although in that first wave of delays, the House of Mouse focused entirely on its more grown-up fare such as Poor Things and Magazine Dreams. Still, the move heralded similar postponements, and it seemed like just a matter of time before one of the major studios elected to shift their tentpole productions into next year amid the ongoing uncertainty caused by the first dual strike in Hollywood since 1960.
Sony is that studio, with reports emerging at the beginning of the weekend that it was pushing several of its major releases further into the future with significant delays. First up is Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse which was slated for a March 29th 2024 launch and currently does not have a release date. As you will probably be aware, this delay has little to do with the strike action and everything to do with the slated release date becoming an impossibility. We’re pleased to see that no release date has been announced, something that will hopefully give the film’s animation team a more relaxed schedule to complete it without months of exhausting crunch.
Next up is another Sony film set in the world of Marvel. Kraven The Hunter has been pushed from October 6th of this year to August 30th 2024. Sony will want the full might of its cast to be promoting this one, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose and Russell Crowe. Pushing the film into a prime summer slot for next year virtually assures that will happen.
The soon-to-release Gran Turismo has been delayed by two weeks to August 25th although the slated early previews are set to remain, with Sony presumably looking to use an extended window of previews to build positive word of mouth for the film in the absence of movie stars to market it. The new take on The Karate Kid has been pushed from June 7th 2024 to December 13th 2024, presumably as writing work on it has been paused. Likewise, the Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel has been delayed, from December 20th to March 29th 2024.
It looks like the domino effect that we’ve been waiting for has begun to occur. The next few weeks will be very interesting as studios examine the state of play and evaluate whether they can use emerging holes in the release schedule to their advantage by releasing films with less competition. That’s a gamble though, and no studio will have forgotten the dismal box office performance of The Flash, a high profile film that failed commercially after releasing without movie stars to promote it.
We’ll bring you more updates on delays as we hear them.
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