With the news that New York City will soon re-open cinemas and a lack of huge news about studio tentpoles fleeing dates in fear of another spike in cases, could it be possible that we’re slowly rounding the corner on COVID-19-related delays? Could it be that theaters might have a legitimate summer movie season, given the good news about vaccine availability and the declining case counts in the US? We don’t want to place too much money on it — after all, we tend to only bet on true long shots in our Oscar columns — but one huge release, Fast and Furious 9 (or F9, which sounds like something you should hit in order to reboot your computer), is betting on this summer as the time to rev its engines.
According to Deadline, Universal has set June 25 as the release date for the star-stacked sequel to finally hit the finish line (and holy shit, this is the last auto-related pun, we promise). That’s about a four-week delay from the original date, which was May 28, and it’s also the date that Venom: Let There Be Carnage is supposed to release. Deadline expects that to move pretty soon, but we only have one thing to say: Let them fight.
They’re reporting that this brief delay is mainly because of:
“[M]ajor overseas markets. They’re still not open despite NYC reopening this Friday and Los Angeles expected to reopen in the near future as Covid cases decrease and vaccinations increase in the city. There is a chance as overseas markets do improve during the pandemic, that F9 could begin its theatrical journey abroad before domestic. All of that said, Universal is trying to have as many markets go at once for F9 as possible.”
So, that’s some good news for your family, but there’s also some bad news for your kids buried in there as well: Minions: The Rise of Gru, is being punted all the way to July 1, 2022, after being initially rescheduled for July 2. It makes sense, given that you don’t want your two biggest franchises battling it out for screen space in a two-week period (that’s more of a Disney problem, anyway), and also given how straight-up packed the rest of the calendar will be for the rest of the year.