State Of Play: January 2021

Hope you're all doing well and January has been as kind as it can be to yourselves. 

We're still in the grip of a deadly pandemic and the cinema schedules keep changing left, right, and centre, so thought it was worth looking at the lie of the land as we come to the close of the first month of a new year. 

To very few people's surprise, news broke late last week that No Time To Die was being shunted back again, this time to 8th October 2021 (from its revised April 2021 release). It's disappointing, but understandable. The world is still very much in flux, so I can appreciate the studios wanting to err to the side of caution. If it keeps this date, it will arrive a few days shy of six years after the last Bond movie, Spectre.

This decision has set off a bit of a domino effect, with a lot of other films now having been moved, including Edgar Wright's horror-thriller Last Night In Soho (now due October 22nd 2021), Ghostbusters: Afterlife (now 11th November), and A Quiet Place: Part II (17th September), with Jared Leto's Morbius, and Tom Holland's Uncharted shifted into 2022.  

Before Christmas, Warner Bros. announced that their full slate for 2021- 17 films in total, including The Matrix 4, Dune, and The Suicide Squad- would follow the example of Wonder Woman 1984 and be released on both HBO Max and in cinemas (where possible) on their respective release dates. Already, the Sopranos prequel The Many Saints Of Newark has had a date change, so others may follow.

Here are the current releases at the moment, correct as of 25th January 2021. Films below marked with an asterisk are Warner Bros. films and will be released on HBO Max on day of release as well as cinemas. 


2021

March 5     Coming 2 America (Amazon Prime)

March 5     Raya And The Last Dragon (Disney+)

March 26     Godzilla Vs. Kong *

May 7     Black Widow

May 28     F9

June 18     In The Heights *

July 2     Top Gun: Maverick

July 9     Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings

July 16     Cinderella

July 30     Jungle Cruise

August 13     BIOS

August 20     The King's Men

September 17     A Quiet Place: Part II

September 24     The Many Saints Of Newark *

October 1     Dune *

October 8     No Time To Die

October 15     The Last Duel

October 22     Last Night In Soho

November 5     Eternals

November 11     Ghostbusters: Afterlife

November 19     Mission: Impossible 7

December 3     Nightmare Alley

December 10     West Side Story

December 17     Sony/Marvel Spider-Man 3

December 22     The Matrix 4 *



2022

January 21     Morbius

February 11     Thor: Love And Thunder

February 11     Uncharted

March 4     The Batman

March 25     Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

July 8     Black Panther 2

July 15     Fantastic Beasts 3

November 4     The Flash

November 11     Captain Marvel 2


At the moment, the first big blockbusters of 2021 will be Black Widow and F9 in May - but it's probably too early to say that those dates will definitely hold. 

This is something that I found out today, and which I found very telling: of the many films who advertised during last year's SuperBowl (a traditional spot for new releases to advertise to a massive audience and where the cost of a 30-second slot was around $5.6m), only four have actually been released: they are The Invisible Man, Sonic The Hedgehog, Mulan, and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge On The Run. 

We'll keep you updated if when things change again.