Black Widow, Delayed Another 2 Months, Will Debut Simultaneously in Theaters and Disney+

Black Widow, Disney’s long-awaited next installment in the Marvel cinematic universe, has received another new release date—as well as an additional platform. The Scarlett Johansson film will arrive in theaters on July 9, Disney said today—more than a year after its original May 2020 release was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, and two months later than its rescheduled release for May 7, 2021. But the film will arrive on Disney+ as a premium title to subscribers the same day that it debuts in theaters, indicating studios still have waning prospects about in-person theater attendance in the coming months. The move is one of several shifts to Disney’s 2021 theatrical slate as businesses continue to grapple with the ongoing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit in-person entertainment especially hard. Cruella, a live-action rendition of the animated classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians starring Emma Stone, will also be released day-and-date on Disney+ as a premium title on May 28. Meanwhile, Pixar’s upcoming animated film, Luca, will move directly to Disney+ for no additional cost to subscribers on July 9—the same path taken by Pixar's most recent release, Soul. Disney did not disclose how much it will cost for Disney+ subscribers to watch Black Widow or Cruella, but it charged $29.99 for its other two Premier Access titles, Mulan and Raya and the Last Dragon. “Today’s announcement reflects our focus on providing consumer choice and serving the evolving preferences of audiences,” Kareem Daniel, chairman, Disney media and entertainment distribution, said in a statement. “By leveraging a flexible distribution strategy in a dynamic marketplace that is beginning to recover from the pandemic, we will continue to employ the best options to deliver The Walt Disney Company’s unparalleled storytelling to fans and families around the world.” A partial strategy shift The move marks a partial strategy shift for Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who had insisted that Black Widow would have a May theatrical release as recently as last month. At the time, he told investors that the company was still intending for the film to be a theatrical release, with an important caveat: “We are going to be watching very carefully the reopening of theaters and the consumer sentiment in terms of desire to go back to theaters and see whether that strategy needs to be revisited,” he said. With the schedule adjustments, Cruella and Black Widow will become the third and fourth films, respectively, to land on Disney+ as Premier Access titles after the fledgling streaming service opted to reroute its live-action remake of Mulan to the streaming service in September for subscribers to watch for $29.99 as the theatrical business remained at a pandemic-induced standstill. While the company did not disclose how successful its move had been to its bottom line, Disney+ replicated the strategy with the Disney animated film Raya and The Last Dragon, which was released earlier this month on Premier Access. Meanwhile, Luca follows in the footsteps of other Pixar films that have seen successful Disney+ debuts. Pixar’s 2020 animated jazz film Soul was rerouted to the streamer in December 2020, and U.S. viewers spent nearly 1.67 billion minutes watching the film in the first two days it was available on the service, according to Nielsen. Grappling with theatrical releases Other studios are grappling with how they should release films this year as Covid-19 vaccinations rolls out across the U.S. and as the White House has tentatively set mid-summer as the time when small in-person gatherings may resume safely. Warner Bros. made the astonishing decision in December to send its entire 2021 film slate simultaneously to theaters and to its own streamer HBO Max, which AT&T CEO John Stankey justified as a necessary decision considering consumer hesitancy to go back to theaters, and an expectation that demand for in-person theater experiences would not intensify in the back half of the year. Other companies have taken a more conservative approach. ViacomCBS’s two films A Quiet Place Part II and Mission: Impossible 7 will migrate over to the company’s streamer Paramount+ 45 days after being released in theaters, but the company is not pursuing a day-and-date strategy. “We believe in two things: We believe the value of theatrical, particularly for pictures like a Mission Impossible or a Top Gun, really big-screen experiences,” ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish told investors last month. “But we also believe the consumer is interested in titles earlier on streaming.”