Source: Wired
Marvel fans worldwide got hit with unfavorable news this week after Disney announced that it would be delaying several Marvel movie releases in 2022. These schedule changes come after productions met several delays due to a snowball effect on the company’s schedules. Accordingly, many highly anticipated titles will have later release dates next year.
It seems like all Marvel Cinematic Films will be facing rescheduling after multiple release push backs to a later slot. One of the first films for 2022 would have been Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which had a pencil-booked opening on March 25. However, the leadership at Marvel has announced that the title will come to viewers on May 6 instead. Thor: Love and Thunder originally booked on that day, which will consequently get pushed back to July 8, 2022. The next Black Panther movie, which carries the subtitle Wakanda Forever, will be released on November 11, 2022.
Before these changes, Marvel announced that it would be releasing four movies in 2022, but it seems that the company will have to take one off the list for next year’s roster. In addition, the next Captain Marvel movie has also been delayed and will come out in February 2023 instead of the fourth quarter of the 2022 release that the studio intended.
Marvel fans will remember how the company took an unprecedented turn a few years back after announcing that Disney would be releasing its own streaming platform to rival the movie behemoth Netflix. Since then, most of the entertainment company’s biggest hits have become available for streaming on the platform, now best known as Disney+. As a result, many of Marvel’s titles have appeared on the website along with multiple series that follow the same universe timeline. Some of the most notable include Wandavision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which broke company and industry records. Later, the company followed that success up with the release of Loki, which follows an alternate timeline created by the mishaps of Avengers: Endgame, which showed the beloved villain Loki’s escape after the battle of New York creating an alternate reality.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the recent MCU releases premiered on the Disney+ platform purely. It seems that the company will continue putting in new releases in the streaming platform to help curb low movie ticket sales due to varying lockdowns still happening in other parts of the world. As the pandemic rages on in other countries, many nations have still disallowed theaters because of rising cases. This string of events, in turn, has caused many theater release delays and affected studio schedules.
Moreover, COVID-19 protocols and infections have caused production delays, too. As the film industry still traverses through the new normal, we now face post-Coronavirus. Marvel fans are more than excited to see what happens next in the fictional world as the events of the last phase presented many twists and turns. Many notable characters have exited the franchise, including Robert Downey Jr, who played Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, and Chris Evans, who portrayed Captain America or Steve Rogers.
Marvel promises to still deliver on its promise and ensure that the awaited titles get released as soon as possible.
