The Guardians Of The Galaxy series has allowed Dave Bautista to transition into a pretty solid career as a both a funny guy in action movies and an action guy in funny movies, but apparently there’s only so much of that attitude that the movie-going public can withstand in one calendar year. We’re just getting Stuber this week, with Bautista playing a brutish, tough-guy cop opposite Kumail Nanjiani’s humorously dorky Uber driver, and now (as reported by The Wrap) STX Entertainment has decided to postpone the release of My Spy, a movie where Bautista plays a tough-guy CIA operative opposite a nine-year-old girl who is—presumably—humorously precocious. We’re not saying they’re the same movie, because Stuber is very violent and The Wrap says My Spy is a “family comedy,” but both do seem to be basing their appeal on Bautista’s reliability as a funny action guy.
My Spy was supposed to be released near the end of August (it’s now coming in 2020), and while The Wrap says that STX hasn’t offered an explanation for the delay, it proposes the theory that My Spy was originally scheduled for August to ride the hype off of Stuber but the studio may have decided to back off so it wouldn’t “oversaturate the market.” If that’s true, it seems pretty reasonable. After all, not every studio can get away with Disney’s plan of releasing three similar movies over the course of five months.