With Artemis Fowl now going straight to Disney+ and bypassing cinemas, Disney boss Bob Iger has hinted that more films may follow.
At the end of last week, Disney announced that the feature film adaptation of
Artemis Fowl, directed by Kenneth Branagh, was no longer to get a cinema release. Originally due last year, it had been put back to this May. And now, with cinemas closed for the foreseeable future and a bunch of delayed films looking for new release dates, the studio took the decision to remove
Artemis Fowl from its theatrical schedule. The film will debut on Disney+ at some point this year.
Disney chief Bob Iger has now given an interview to Barrons where he confirmed the studio’s commitment to cinema releases, but left the door open for more films to go to Disney+ instead.
“In terms of movies going ahead after
Artemis, there may be a few more that we end up putting directly onto Disney+. But for the most part a lot of the big tentpole Disney films we’ll simply wait for slots. In some cases we’ve announced new ones already, but later on in the calendar”, he said.
It’s primarily the Fox titles that Disney has inherited that are at the most risk of skipping cinemas now. The highest profile remains
X-Men: The New Mutants, but also the long-delayed
The Woman In The Window, starring Amy Adams. Then there’s the US release of
The Personal History Of David Copperfield to slot in somewhere as well.
The full interview, where Iger also talks about the studio’s plans for reopening its theme parks,
can be found here.
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