Disney’s Mulan release postponed indefinitely amid pandemic chaos

Walt Disney cancels planned August release of Mulan, delays Star Wars and Avatar sequels, as coronavirus disrupts Hollywood.

Yifei Liu in a scene from Disney’s live-action remake of the animated classic Mulan.

Walt Disney is making massive changes to its movie-release schedule, including cancelling the planned August release of Mulan, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to roil Hollywood.

Disney said it is not only forgoing its planned August 21 premiere of the live-action remake of the animated classic, but is also delaying the release of future instalments in the Avatar and Star Wars series by a year.

While Mulan doesn’t yet have a new date, Disney said it was moving its next Avatar and Star Wars movies by around a year each, to 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Hollywood studios have been forced in recent months into a game of wait and see as the effects of the coronavirus up-end plans to reopen the economy. This is the third time Disney has had to change its release plans for Mulan. However, this is the first time Disney cancelled one date without providing a new one.

“Over the last few months, it’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis,” said a Disney spokesman by email.

Similar delays at other major Hollywood studios have already forced exhibitors such as AMC Entertainment Holdings to postpone their scheduled reopenings.

No major release is now on the calendar until early September, and some exhibitors consider that to be overly optimistic, making it unclear when consumers might return to auditoriums. Some Hollywood executives privately say they don’t expect major releases to come out until at least 2021.

Earlier this week AT&T Inc.’s Warner Bros. delayed its coming science-fiction thriller Tenet indefinitely. The studio is expected to select a new date soon, and when it does, it is likely the $US200 million film will open first overseas and then domestically, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The calendar reshuffling changes nearly a decade’s worth of release plans Disney had set for two of its most vital franchises.

Four sequels to Avatar, James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster, were moved back a year, meaning Avatar 2 will premiere in 2022 and Avatar 5 in 2028. Disney acquired the franchise in its 2019 purchase of the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox.

Dow Jones Newswires