It’s been almost an entire year since the Coronavirus pandemic first brought the world to a standstill, and things are taking a lot longer to get back to normal than even the most pessimistic among us could have predicted, which has been very bad news for the theatrical industry.
The global box office was down by a mind-boggling $30 billion last year, 50% more than initially projected, and business is still in a dire predicament. 60% of screens in the United States remain closed, while the United Kingdom’s largest chain completely ceased operations in October and hasn’t given any indication of when it might reopen.
Clearly, the studios still aren’t too confident, either, after Warner Bros. opted to debut their entire 2021 slate of films on HBO Max the same day they arrive on the big screen, while Morbius has already packed up and fled from March to October, and Amazon are in talks to secure the distribution rights to Chris Pratt’s sci-fi actioner The Tomorrow War for $200 million, a movie that wasn’t even set for release until July.
Kevin Feige recently admitted that as much as he’d love for Black Widow to hit theaters in May as scheduled, confidence was meaningless in the current climate, and the latest reports are now indicating that the Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster could end up being pushed back one more time, presumably forcing the rest of Phase Four to follow suit in the process.
Marvel may have the Disney Plus Premier Access cushion to fall back on in the worst case scenario, but a VOD release would still see them losing out on a huge amount of revenue. After all, only four of the studio’s last seventeen efforts have made less than $700 million at the box office. Still, at this stage, Black Widow launching on streaming remains very much on the table.