‘Mulan’ Release Date Changes Again – Variety


Disney has delayed the theatrical release of “Mulan” for the third time, officially ending Hollywood’s hopes of saving a season of summer movies.

The studio’s live-action remake will debut in theaters on July 24. Instead, “Mulan” will hit the big screen on August 21.

“While the pandemic has changed our release plans for ‘Mulan’ and we will continue to be flexible as conditions require, our belief in the power of this film and its message of hope and perseverance have not changed,” said the Disney co-president. . and Creative Director Alan Horn and Co-President Alan Bergman. “Director Niki Caro and our cast and crew have created a beautiful, epic and poignant film that is everything the film experience should be, and that’s where we think it belongs: on the world stage and on the big screen for the audiences from all over the world enjoy together. “

The move comes after news that Warner Bros. postponed the release of “Tenet,” a sci-fi epic by director Christopher Nolan, for the second time. That movie, starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, is expected to premiere on August 12.

With the “Tenet” vacancy of release schedules, “Mulan” was positioned to be the first major film to rekindle cinema in North America. While Nolan, a leading cinema advocate, had planned to bring audiences to theaters with “Tenet,” industry insiders suggest Disney did not want “Mulan” to be the test case for new movies amid the pandemic.

Movie theaters across the country and around the world have been closed for most of 2020 to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Major movie theaters in the US, such as AMC, Regal and Cinemark, have aimed to resume business in July. When they open, it’s unclear how eager customers will be to return to the movies.

The $ 200 million “Mulan” is expected to resonate strongly in China. But Chinese movie theaters are currently closed, with no known reopening date. Given the importance of “Mulan” in China, it would have been risky to release the film and leave the Chinese public behind.

Two smaller films, Solstice Studios’ Russell Crowe thriller “Unhinged” and Sony’s romantic drama “The Broken Hearts Gallery,” are slated to open in theaters in early July. They will be the first films to be released since theaters began to close in mid-March due to public health concerns.

This is the third time Disney has delayed “Mulan,” directed by Niki Caro and stars Liu Yifei. It was originally scheduled to open on March 27, but was withdrawn two weeks earlier when the coronavirus began to spread in North America. The studio moved the film in late July, but some felt it was an optimistic delay since there was no guarantee that theaters could reopen to a significant degree by then.

Disney has moved around a series of upcoming titles in recent months, including “The Eternals”, “Jungle Cruise” and “Indiana Jones 5”. Given that production has been halted worldwide for months due to the global health crisis, some of those films would not have been ready to debut in theaters on the scheduled release dates.

Like the 1998 animated version, “Mulan” follows a warrior who disguises herself as a man to prevent her elderly father from having to serve in the military. It is the first of Disney’s live-action remakes to be rated PG-13, due to sequences of violence.