Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020, studios have had to shift their release date schedules in order to accommodate to the constantly changing state of the pandemic. The latest major film to see a change is Sony Pictures’ ‘Morbius’ just weeks away from its release.
The Jared Leto staring superhero flick was set to release on January 28th, 2022. Now, fans can expect the film to release on April 1st, 2022. Unfortunately, like many other films that were scheduled to come out over the past few years, ‘Morbius’ has had its fair share of release changes.
Prior to the onset of the pandemic, ‘Morbius’ was set to debut in the summer of 2020 but as we all know by now… COVID had other plans. The film would then go on to be pushed several more times, each time with the conditions around the world would be in a much better place.
Now, as the Omicron variant takes hold of countries around the globe, the safety of going out to the theater has once again been put into question. Masks are starting to become a requirement in several areas and in some instances, theaters are having to close their doors.
So, what does this mean for the next few months?
While this news comes as an unfortunate start to the 2022 movie calendar, I don’t think that this is cause for concern. When a major release shifts, it is hard rot not think back to the early days of the pandemic and think about the possibility of a massive shift in release dates.
With the holidays coming to a close and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ winding down (But still performing quite well) at the box office, we have hit the stretch of time of the year where there really aren’t too many new major releases. As far as the first month or so of the year the biggest releases are ‘Scream’, ‘Jackass Forever’, and ‘Uncharted’. Of course there are multiple smaller releases sprinkled in there but as far as larger projects go, the 3 films listed above take us up to mid February.
If this new variant was taking hold of the world over the summer then we would most likely be having a different discussion but the light release schedule up until March does buy some time for the current situation to improve.
As far as the rest of the month goes, I wouldn’t be too surprised if ‘Scream’ shifts to a day and date release on Paramount+. I wouldn’t place a large bet on it but if the news broke tomorrow… I wouldn’t be surprised.
‘Morbius’ centers around Dr. Michael Morbius who, while trying to cure himself from a rare disease, inadvertently turns himself into a vampire. The film will now release on April 1st, 2022 and stars Jared Leto, Adria Arjona, Matt Smith, Jared Harris, and Tyrese Gibson