Disney announced Thursday that they will be indefinitely postponing the premier of Mulan and pushing back the release of Avatar and Star Wars due to theaters being closed because of the pandemic.
What We Know:
- According to the company, these cancellations and delays come in response to theater closures and production shutdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic. A Walt Disney spokesperson said, “Over the last few months, it’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis, and today that means pausing our release plans for Mulan as we assess how we can most effectively bring this film to audiences around the world.”
- Mulan was scheduled to debut March 27, but due to the virus, it was pushed to July 24 and then pushed again to August 21. The live-action film is a remake of the 1988 animated version.
- A few days prior to this news, Warner Bros. pulled the plug on releasing its new thriller, Tenet from its August release. The director of the film, Christopher Nolan says the film was delayed twice with an original release of August 12. Both films, Mulan and Tenet, cost $200 million to produce.
- As said by NBC News, Disney has said the pandemic has forced them to make “additional adjustments to our longer-term slate plans”. This included pushing future productions of the Avatar and Star Wars. Now, due to the coronavirus, the sequel to Avatar is scheduled to debut in 2022 rather than 2021 and the Star Wars series is shifted from 2022 to 2023.
- Theaters hoped the premiere of Mulan would help bring families back into cinemas but with the announcing of its postponement, that won’t be happening. According to AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc., the largest U.S. theater owner, they will not be opening back up their theaters until mid-to-late August.
Mulan is based on the Chinese folktale of a young woman who defies social conventions and disguises herself as a man to train as a warrior and fight in the Imperial Army.
