With COVID-19 numbers still high, studios are abandoning Spring ‘21

Posted on January 29, 2021

By MARK VIOLA

Last fall, with COVID-19 cases on the rise and theater companies hanging on by a thread after movie studios pulled nearly all of their September and October releases, MGM announced that the new James Bond film, “No Time to Die,” was getting pushed back from its early November debut to March.

That decision eventually proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of late 2020 theatrical releases. Within days, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark, two of North America’s largest movie theater chains, announced they were closing nearly all of their U.S. locations. Soon, pretty much every other major film release scheduled for November and December got pulled from the calendar as well.

Late last week, “No Time to Die” was delayed again, losing its April 2 release date in exchange for one in October. Although the James Bond film was not the first film to get pulled from a spring release due to record-high COVID-19 numbers, it seemed to once again be the catalyst for numerous other postponements.

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