The long wait to see the upcoming “Black Widow” movie will continue after Disney CEO Bob Chapek confirmed there are no plans to bring the film to Disney+...
With movie theaters in most parts of the United States still shut down due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, film studios across the world are adapting and changing plans for upcoming releases.
Almost every major movie has been pushed back to later dates with many films abandoning all plans to be released in 2020. Blockbuster films have taken the hardest hit due to the pandemic with guaranteed box office smashes like the upcoming “Fast and the Furious” sequel along with the newest James Bond film “No Time To Die” both being delayed far past their original release dates.
The same can be said for Marvel’s upcoming “Black Widow” film starring Scarlett Johansson after that film was originally slated to hit theaters back in May. As of now “Black Widow” is expected to be released on Nov. 5 but nothing seems certain right now with no sign of the coronavirus slowing down, which means theaters could still be shut down for the foreseeable future.
On Wednesday, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced that the studio would release their upcoming live action adaptation of “Mulan” would debut on Disney+ instead of being released in theaters with a premium price point of $29.99. While that solved the release date problem for “Mulan,” which had also been pushed back several times, Chapek confirmed that “Black Widow” would not receive similar treatment.
“We’re very pleased to be able to bring ‘Mulan’ to our consumer base that’s been waiting for it for a long, long time, as we’ve had to unfortunately move our theatrical date several times,” Chapek explained. “We’re fortunate that we have the opportunity to bring it to our own direct-to-consumer platform so consumers can enjoy it, but we’re looking at ‘Mulan’ as a one-off in terms of — as opposed to, say, trying to say there’s some new business windowing model that we’re looking at.
“So ‘Mulan’ is a one-off. That said, we find it very interesting to be able to take a new offering, our premier access offering, to consumers at that $29.99 price and learn from it and see what happens not only in terms of the uptake of the number of subscribers that we get on the platform but the actual number of transactions on the Disney+ platform that we get on that PVOD offering.”
That’s probably disappointing news for Marvel fans, who may have hoped that “Mulan” being released on Disney+ could serve as a precursor for “Black Widow” but it doesn’t appear to be in the works.
While some studios have started releasing films on demand with a premium price on various streaming services, it doesn’t appear Disney will sacrifice a potentially profitable box office haul for a Marvel movie like “Black Widow” by putting it on Disney+. At least not yet, anyways.
