This morning, possibly as a reaction to MGM delaying No Time To Die and Cineworld closing all Regal theaters in the U.S. and U.K. (again), Warner Bros. announced that it was delaying Denis Villeneuve’s Dune from December 18 of this year to October 1, 2021—nearly a full year, in other words. At the time, the length of that delay seemed to imply that similar delays would soon be coming for other films on the Warner Bros. schedule, and now they very much have. As reported by Variety, The Batman has been bumped from October 1, 2021 (Dune’s new release day) to March 4, 2022. The Flash movie, which is definitely going to come out for real, has now been moved to November 4, 2022, and Shazam 2 (originally penciled in for November 4, 2022) has been bumped to June 2, 2023. Can you even imagine what 2023 will look like? That might as well be the year 10 million.
Meanwhile, Black Adam (set for December 22, 2021) and a Minecraft movie (set for March 3, 2022) have been removed from the calendar entirely. There is also one additional odd wrinkle in all of this: The Matrix 4, previously scheduled for April 1, 2022, has been moved to December 22, 2021—so, earlier. That’s either a good sign for Lana Wachowski’s sequel/reboot/reupload or a bad sign, since it could indicate that Warner Bros. is either confident that it’ll meet that date and do well or it doesn’t care if it meets that date or does well. Or maybe Warner Bros. is just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something here works out.