It feels like Covid all over again, but it’s not. Disney has just made a slew of release-date changes, many due to the impact of the WGA strike and screenplays not being ready and productions paused.
We already know that Thunderbolts and Blade are waiting the strike out before rolling cameras. Scripts aren’t fully ready in regards to the new Avengers movies. Avengers: Kang Dynasty goes from May 2, 2025, to May 1, 2026. Avengers: Secret Wars is also pushed another year from May 1, 2026, to May 7, 2027.
We told you that 2023 largely was safe in regards to staying intact (knock on wood), but the ramifications of the writers strike and productions paused will be felt throughout 2024 and beyond. Commence the great release-date shuffle by the motion picture studios.
Also the other delay here with the MCU titles is that Disney wants to make sure they’re better — better than what they’ve been doing from script stage to VFX in the wake of fan pans and lower post-pandemic box office results for such films as Eternals, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love & Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
First major change is that the untitled Deadpool movie will fire off next summer, May 3, while Captain America: Brave New World, gets pushed to July 26, 2024. Thunderbolts stays in 2024, moving off July 26 to December 20. Deadpool 3, in a vote of confidence moves up from Nov. 8, 2024.
Blade goes from September 6, 2024, to Feb. 14, 2025 — that Valentine’s Day/near Presidents Day frame which has been a sweet spot for MCU.
Fantastic Four shifts deeper into 2025, from February 14 to May 2.
Avatar 3 officially is delayed a year from December 20, 2024, to December 19, 2025. Which thus pushes other sequels from James Cameron as Avatar 4 shifts from December 18, 2026, to December 21, 2029, and Avatar 5 goes from December 22, 2028, to December 19, 2031. While these scripts already are locked, the shift of movies due to the WGA strike is pushing the Avatar sequels around. Producer Jon Landau said the following today about the moves:
The Star Wars movies, which still are being baked, are getting kicked down the road like cans: One of them goes from December 19, 2025, to May 22, 2026. A another untitled one gets added on December 18, 2026.
The new live-action Moana movie with Dwayne Johnson has staked out the summer date of June 27, 2025, about a week earlier from its previous July 2 date.
The new Alien movie, which is shooting overseas, takes the Disney RSVP date of August 16, 2024.
The Rami Malek movie The Amateur from 20th Century Studios takes the old date of Deadpool 3, that being November 8, 2024. The pic, directed by James Hawes, follows a CIA cryptographer who, after his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack, demands his bosses go after them. When it becomes clear they won’t act due to conflicting internal priorities, he blackmails the agency into training him and letting him go after them himself.
Disney also has RSVP’d the following dates for untitled films: September 6, 2024; March 21, 2025 (instead of April 11, 2025); a Marvel movie for July 25, 2025; August 8, 2025 (instead of August 15 that year); and an MCU title on November 7, 2025. A Disney movie that was set for May 22, 2026, has been removed from the schedule.