No Time to Diewill hit theaters five days earlier, on November 20th. While this isn’t a few months earlier, it’s still better than nothing. As for the U.K. release date, the highly anticipated 25th installment in theJames Bondfranchise will keep its November 12th release date. The movie will now wage box office war on Pixar’sSoulthe weekend before Thanksgiving, which is typically a competitive time frame for the entertainment business. However, this year probably won’t be too typical.
No Time To Diehas seen its release date shift a few times prior to the new announcement for North American moviegoers. TheJames Bondmovie was originally going to open in theaters on November 2019, but was then moved back to February 2020. From there, it was April 10th, 2020 and then it was postponed to November 2020. Movie theaters in North America all shut their doors in the middle of March and, for the most part, have remained closed since then.
Now, all eyes are on Warner Bros. and Christopher Nolan’sTenet, which isscheduled to open in theaters on July 31st. The movie was originally going to debut on the 17th, but Nolan’s 2010 blockbusterInceptionwill take that date for a special tenth anniversary celebration. Major movie theater chains are counting on the two Nolan projects, along with Disney’s live-action adaptation ofMulan(July 24th) to kick off an abbreviated summer season, though it still remains unclear if people are willing to head into theaters like they did before everything went down earlier this year.
Warner Bros. tookWonder Woman 1984and shifted its August release date to October, while Orionmoved Bill & Ted Face the Music up a weekto August 21st.No Time to Dieand movies likeBlack Widowthat have been shifted to later this year, will have the studios watchingTenetandMulanto see what the new moviegoing experience is all about. Social distancing will more than likely have to be put into play, but Cinemark has already stated that they will only encourage masks, as they will not be mandatory. AMC will probably adopt the same strategy in order to get as many people back into theaters as possible.
It is believed that pushingNo Time To Diefrom April to Novembercost MGM between $30 million to $50 million, due to advertising already being set up and ready to go. Theaters in China were the first to shut down, signaling for a disastrous international box office debut, which then rapidly shifted to North America too. While Thanksgiving is usually a huge time to head to the movies, it might not be that way this year, even with blockbusters likeNo Time To DieandBlack Widow.The official James Bond Twitter accountwas the first to announce the earlier release date forNo Time To Die.
