For the past three years, Disney has released a Star Wars movie around Christmas: The Force Awakens in 2016, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016, and The Last Jedi in 2017. With Solo having already come out (although maybe they should have saved it for December), the Mouse House will fill its mid-to-late-December slot with whimsy and penguins (not porg-uins): Mary Poppins Returns, the follow-up to 1964’s Mary Poppins (it’s the longest gap between live-action film sequels ever). The Emily Blunt-starring film was originally scheduled to come out on December 25, but possibly because Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year, Disney has moved it back to the 19th.
That means Mary Poppins Returns, which could become one of the year’s highest-grossing films, on Wednesday, and James Wan’s Aquaman, and the James Cameron-produced Alita: Battle Angel, and the Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, and Robert Zemeckis’ Welcome to Marwen, and the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly-starring Holmes and Watson two days later on Friday. If MoviePass still exists in December, your card might explode from over-activity.
As Forbes theorizes, “The Emily Blunt sequel is sure to complicate matters for Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and [the] YA fantasy The Mortal Engines, both of which open on Dec. 14, [so] I imagine we’re going to see a ton of release date musical chairs taking place in the next week or two.”
Here’s an exclusive look at Disney’s competitors fleeing that weekend.
I hear July 9, 2021 is taken, too.
(Via Forbes)
