It is now confirmed — unleashing unbounded chaos is Disney’s idea of a fruitful day.
From treading the controversial waters of another MCU star facing assault allegations, Disney has jumped to coughing up what is probably every release date, unexpected new film, and delayed pre-decided slate of movies it had in its stock. It is all a temporary fix to temporarily redirect the dark cloud plaguing the studio, as well as momentarily fix some of its issues. Though a Sony project, which was considered very dead in the waters, has risen from its ashes to mock Disney’s latest round of Marvel delays.
Disney delays almost all its Marvel films, dealing a major pushback to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty
Disney has announced big changes in the release dates of its upcoming projects, with the majority of its Marvel titles getting pushed back owing to production setbacks, the ongoing writers, as well as all the reasons it didn’t mention. Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Blade, and Fantastic Four have all experienced delays.
But the biggest change has been applied to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which has been delayed by a year. Whether MCU is planning to find a replacement for Majors, solve the problem while keeping the actor and Kang, or is simply waiting for the whole controversy around the Creed star to die down remains to be seen, though neither is a long-term solution. The delay in its release has also shifted Avengers: Secret Wars to 2027.
Deadpool 3 is the only one whose theatrical debut has been preponed by six months — from Nov. 8, 2024, to May 3, 2024. Well, that is more to do with the fact that it is one of the Marvel productions whose script is already penned and less reliant on the running consensus that it is the next MCU savior.
El Muerto, Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff thought to have been shelved, jumps back into action
First announced by Sony back in 2022, El Muerto wasn’t exactly on anyone’s list of must-watch Marvel live-action adaptations. Set to be a Spider-Man spinoff, the film’s cast includes Bad Bunny as the highly skilled super-wrestler, Juan-Carlos Sanchez — the titular character’s alter ego. After a silence of months, a recent update stating that it won’t make its 2024 release date was all the confirmation Marvel fans needed to accept that the film would never see the light of day.
But just as Disney shoved its Marvel projects down the pipeline, admitting defeat in the face of its looming troubles, it has been revealed El Muerto is all set to begin principal photography.
Avatar 3 and its sequels continue a much-detested tradition
There rests a gap of more than a decade between Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water. But as that delay was to give the sequel the chance to make use of the technology that simply didn’t exist back in 2009, one would expect that the next films in the franchise would not face the same given all the top-notch visual effects they can employ right now.
But evidently, tradition is tradition as Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5 release dates have been delayed to Dec. 19, 2025, Dec. 21, 2029, and Dec. 19, 2031, respectively. This would be the ninth time the third film has been delayed, as its release date has been shifted from 2015 to 2016, 2017, and 2018, then 2020, 2021 (with Avatar 4 and 5 getting Dec. 20, 2024, and Dec. 19, 2025, respectively). Then in 2019, the release date of Avatar 3 was changed to Dec. 22, 2023, followed by it being pushed to Dec. 20, 2024.
This latest edition of “What on Earth did Disney do now?” also saw the revelation of yet another Star Wars movie — with no info about its premise — set to debut on Dec. 18, 2026, along with another franchise offering whose release date has been changed to May 22, 2026. And while no one was asking, Moana’s live-action adaptation — which is moving way too quickly — has already nabbed a release date.