Hollywood disprograms all its blockbusters in disaster in front of the advance of the coronavirus

The summer, the high season of American blockbusters, will be summed up this year with the release of only two blockbusters: Tenet, a spy film by Christopher Nolan with Robert Pattinson produced by Warner Bros and Mulan from Disney. And again, given the evolution of the virus, these outings could themselves be postponed to better days. The other major Hollywood studios of Sony, MGM, Universal in Paramount took no risks and moved all their blockbusters scheduled from April to August.

Superhero fans, who have been eagerly awaiting Wonder Woman 84 and the adventures of Black Widow, the spy played by Scarlett Johansson, will have to wait until August 12 and November 4, respectively. Expected August 5 in dark rooms, Morbius , the vampire of the Marvel universe will have to hibernate for long months. He will not taste his first drop of blood until March 2021. It is always better than Les Nouveaux Mutants , already four times postponed, today without date.

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If the superhero genre suffers the consequences of the coronavirus epidemic, the same is true for action films. James Bond was the first to put his gun away and waits until November 11 to die. Same alert for Maverick , the second installment of Top Gun . Tom Cruise cancels his July 15 mission to better take off around December 23 in the United States. Fast & Furious 9 is also turning around and will resume driving in April 2021. For the youngest, summer is better to be sunny. The remake of Ghostbusters is postponed from August 19 to March 5, 2021. The Minions 2 is moved in a year, to July 2021. Each postponement has its reasons.

“For James Bond and Fast & Furious , the rights holders have very specific wishes. They have symbolic dates to which they hold. Fast & Furious, for example, was always released between March, April and May, " explains Xavier Albert, managing director of Universal Pictures International France. For Gru and his minions, the reason is different. “ The production of this film is done in Paris in the fifteenth arrondissement in the studios of Mac Guff , explains Xavier Albert. Their creatives had to confine themselves like everyone else in France in mid-March. "A film as heavy as this cannot be done by telework, so we postponed it by a year because summer is a very good period for animated films." The Marvel used to going out at regular intervals have been shifted by Disney in blocks of six months.

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This observation made, there were two tactics. Postpone the film for a year and release it in the same season. This is what will happen to Gru and his Minions at Universal. In the case of the Marvel that came out at a brisk pace, the blocks were shifted by six months. Eternals with Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek will be released on February 21, 2021, Shang-Chi in May 2021, Doctor Strange 2 in November and Thor: Love and Thunder in February 2022.

For cinemas in France which hope to reopen during the summer and which counted a lot on this armada of blockbusters to make spectators want to return to dark cinemas, these reports are a big blow. Hollywood studios could hardly do otherwise. In Los Angeles, everything stopped suddenly. This applies to filming like that of Jurassic World 3 . With so many months of delay, the fearsome T-Rex and other diplodocuses will probably not be able to meet the initial release date in June 2021.

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Same thing for films that are in postproduction. Aretha Franklin's biopic had to delay its release from October 28 to December. " The creative studios that make trailers and marketing material for films such as posters are also closed, " said Stéphane Huard, president of Sony Picture Entertainment France . To release a blockbuster, it also takes time for dubbing in each country. The big films scheduled for this summer would never have had the two and a half months of promotion necessary to ensure a good release in cinemas. "

The idea of ​​taking these blockbusters out of the continent healed of the virus, starting with Asia and then Europe and finally the United States, was immediately rejected because of piracy. But also for financial reasons. The international certainly represents 70% of Hollywood's revenues, but "these behemoths must each bring in a billion dollars in revenue worldwide," recalls Xavier Albert of Universal Pictures . We can make staggered releases by country for intermediate films but not for a blockbuster ”. Given the stakes, "blockbusters will come out once cinemas around the world are lined up to reopen", underlines Stéphane Huard.

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Very clever will be who can say the date when cinemas around the world will be open again. In Europe, each country has had its strategy against the virus. Between Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, France and Spain, the deconfinement then the reopening of cinemas will be done with weeks of delay. In the United States, it's even worse. After the two months lost due to the erratic policy of Donald Trump and the lack of a common strategy between the 52 states, major circuits like AMC are sure to reopen out of order.

Rooms closed until September in France?

In France, the reopening of cinemas will depend on the prefects. In view of the 600 cinemas in Chinese shopping centers that reopened a fortnight before closing in the face of a second wave of the virus, we can assume that no risk will be taken. If our cinemas reopen this summer, they will show the two big American films Tenet and Mulan , perhaps American intermediate films that are ready like USS Greyhound: The Battle of the Atlantic with Tom Hanks but above all French films: those which were on view in March when the cinemas closed and those which were to be released. All the hopes rest on Martin Bonne Provost's La Bonne Épouse with Juliette Binoche and Yolande Moreau, a quality comedy which had a lightning-fast start the week before the cinemas close on March 15 and which will return to theaters as soon as it reopens. If cinemas only reopen in September and October, as certain big bosses of the seventh art envision today, the offer will be wider.