It’s been mixed bag of news coming out of Disney as they realign some of their film release intentions in the wake of their massive merger with Fox. It means there are going to be some significant changes to their release schedules with the most notable changes being to two big-budget franchises that will dominate the next decade.
Fans who have already waited the best part of a decade for James Cameron to return to Pandora for his Avatar sequels have had to make do with expanding promises of quantity, but disappointing delays. They will now have even longer to wait, with the release date of the four Avatar sequels all shifting back a year. Avatar 2 was due to hit cinemas on 18th December 2020 but will now arrive 17th December 2020 and each subsequent sequel will then roll out at two year intervals (therefore the last Avatar story planned (so far) is due 17th December 2027).
Disney have announced that though this December’s The Rise of Skywalker is seen by many as the end of the ‘Skywalker’ aspect of the Star Wars universe, they do intend to make more Star Wars movies and that there are current tentative plans for three more, un-named films set in that universe. They will hit the multiplexes on 16th December 2022, 20th December 2024 and 18th December 2026.
Disney hasn’t yet confirmed it’s next two main Marvel releases planned for 2020 (May and November) – though speculation seems to be that it will be a combination of the Black Widow, The Eternals or Shang-chi: Master of Kung Fu which are all about to go into production soon. We also now know that there will be three Marvel movies in both 2021 and 2022. There is confirmation that the troubled New Mutants (starring Game of Thrones‘ Maisie Williams) which some had predicted would bypass cinemas and go straight to the hulu platform after major reshoots, has moved from August 2019 to 3rd April 2020.
