On May 1, Disney and Marvel Studios intend to release Black Widow, the 24th film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first in the MCU in nearly 10 months (the last was July’s Spider-Man: Far from Home). The film stars Scarlett Johansson as the eponymous Russian superspy and Avengers charter member, who she’s played since 2010’s Iron Man 2. The picture is also a first for the Marvel film franchise—it’s a prequel. Set between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, the film is finally going to explore Nat’s backstory and is expected to truly kickoff Marvel’s “Phase 4.”
Unless it doesn’t. The coronavirus pandemic has caused a massive disruption not just in the daily lives of billions but in many major industries, including entertainment. Initially considered an outlier due to its specific international brand, the James Bond film No Time to Die was the first wide theatrical tentpole to move off its April release date. It was not the last.
As the virus expanded its spread across the United States, and was officially recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, nearly every major Hollywood studio put upcoming releases on hold: F9: The Fast Saga (Universal), A Quiet Place Part II (Paramount), Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (Sony), The Lovebirds (Paramount), and three pictures from Disney—Mulan, New Mutants and Antlers—are among the bigger titles that have all been either postponed indefinitely or moved to a new date.
Additionally, Disney was the first to shut down production on most of its in-progress TV shows and movies, including another Marvel film (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings). Still, the Mouse House has remained silent on the fate of Black Widow. With the release of the film just seven weeks away, will Disney hold fast and try to ride out the COVID-19 storm or attempt to move the next entry in its most valuable franchise out of the path of the disease?
Moving or delaying Black Widow could have staggering
implications for the rest of the movie industry—as well as the pandemic itself.
Disney arguably has a cushion of, perhaps, three weeks to see how the virus
plays out. If the studio decides by early or even mid-April to take the Widow
off her May 1 perch, that would mean not only does the studio lack the
confidence in the marketplace to share its new Marvel blockbuster, but in turn
that the country has not weathered the worst of this crisis just yet.
Let’s be clear: that sobering prospect, and the human and societal cost that could come with it, remain the most urgent priorities for the nation and the world at large. But since we’re focusing here on the film industry, Disney blinking on Black Widow could have a domino effect that sends the movie business into a tailspin for months with continued delays, shrinking audiences, job losses, and a detrimental ripple effect on Disney and the other studios all possible.
What are Disney’s options with Black Widow? The company
does have several, actually, ranging from the predictable to the bold, and all
come with inherent risks and advantages:
Stay on Target
The execs at Disney and Marvel may be experts at creating
and marketing blockbuster family entertainment, but they’re certainly not
scientists. No one can predict where the pandemic will be in a few weeks or a
month, but Disney could keep Black Widow on May 1 and hope for
the best. This in itself, however, could end up with a few different scenarios:
By the time early May rolls around, the worst of the
COVID-19 crisis could be behind us and people worldwide, relieved and looking
for just the kind of escapism and fun that a Marvel movie almost always
promises, could flock to theaters and make the movie a giant success—something
that, with its prequel nature and its focus on a character that audiences saw
die just last year, was not necessarily guaranteed.
Or the movie could arrive and, even if all seems to be on the mend, still face some strong headwinds. One might be a public leery to come out in droves just yet for mass gatherings in close quarters. The other could be theater chains that are still closed or have temporarily decreased capacity in their auditoriums, as the country’s biggest chain, AMC, did on Friday before NYC and LA shut them down.
A Short Hop
Disney could also move Black Widow to a slightly later
release date. Right now there isn’t a single Friday in May that could offer
serious competition to the epic battle between Natasha and Taskmaster: in fact,
May 2020 was looking remarkably weak in terms of tentpoles even before F9
moved off its original May 22 starting line.
Disney itself has Artemis Fowl coming on May 29, so it might veer away from that (not that the two have much overlap), but even if the company shifts the Widow to the May 8, 15, or 22, there’s little to interfere with her, and she still has a few weeks to erase the red in her ledger before Wonder Woman 1984 swings into action on June 5.
A Long Leap
Now we get into some trickier territory. If Disney is not
feeling good at all about Black Widow’s chances in May, the
company could move the movie out of that month completely—and that has bigger
ramifications.
Where could she go? Disney has Pixar’s Soul coming on June 19, and it could perhaps bump that animated entry into a later slot and put Black Widow there instead. That lets the movie open a full two weeks after Wonder Woman 1984–not ideal but not too bad—but it also puts it nearly head to head with Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, which opens on June 24. Aside from that potential behemoth, the competition is rather sparse for several weeks.
The other possibility would be to move Black Widow into the November 6 release slot of the next Marvel Studios movie—The Eternals. But that in turn literally pushes the entire MCU, which really works like a giant, interlocking TV series, six months into the future. Marvel only has two movies coming out this year (and allegedly two Disney+ series with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision, although production on both is paused at the moment). However, the studio has four scheduled in 2021: Shang-Chi in February, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in May, Spider-Man 3 (which is technically a Sony release, but is set in the MCU) in July, and Thor: Love and Thunder in November. Add a couple more Disney+ entries, and there’s not a whole lot of room to stick Eternals in there… unless the pandemic continues to slow production down on any or all of those titles, which is a distinct and increasingly strong possibility.
Moving Black Widow out of May, when the
theater exhibition business is already going to be reeling from the loss of
business between now and then, could be a fatal blow to a lot of movie
theaters. But there is another option that could be even deadlier for them.
The Disney+ Option
There has been
scattered speculation online that Disney could make a bold move and premiere Black
Widow on its relatively young streaming service, Disney+.
For theater owners, that would be not just unplugging the
patient’s life support but then taking their pillow and smothering them.
Exhibitors already feel bullied by Disney, which demands a larger cut upfront
from the box office than the other studios. Because the company releases almost
nothing but blockbusters year after year, the theater owners pretty much have
to kowtow to the Mouse.
Such a move might cause a rift between Disney and the
exhibitors that even Avengers: Endgame Reunion couldn’t
heal. On the other hand, perhaps Disney could somehow get the theater owners
involved. In a long shot alternative, Disney could either allow them to stream
the movie first (although at present AMC is the only chain with its own branded
streaming service) or figure out a way to charge a premium to watch the film
and give the owners a desperately needed piece of the action.
Paying a premium on top of their monthly subscription fee might cause some Disney+ subscribers to grumble, but since a lot of them were going to pay to see the movie in theaters anyway, who cares? And the rush of new subscribers and publicity for Disney+—which is currently struggling to generate some excitement between seasons of The Mandalorian—might be a shot in the arm for the service.
With all these options, one thing is probably certain:
Disney and the rest of the studios are going to have to dial down their
expectations. There’s a very good chance that the pandemic and its aftermath,
both socially and economically, are going to have lingering effects for months
to come, if not the rest of 2020. That means that even the biggest cinematic
behemoths may not pull down the record-setting opening weekends or
billion-dollar grosses that are now the standard. Whenever or however Black
Widow does come out, Disney should just be glad that people still want
to see it, and adjust accordingly.
It may be a while before the movie studios can erase the red
that will accumulate in their own ledgers from this terrible, surreal spring,
but if Natasha Romanoff can eventually do it, so can they.
Black Widow is scheduled
to open, for now, on May 1.
The post Will Disney Delay Black Widow Release Over Coronavirus Fears? appeared first on Den of Geek.
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