There’s lots of talk that the ongoing strikes has Disney reviewing four of its releases set for 2023 and shifting them back to 2024.
It is being widely reported that Walt Disney Studios is reviewing its release strategy for the rest of 2023 amid strike action in Hollywood that is threatening to derail this year’s release schedule. According the reports which first surfaced at Bloomberg, the studio is initially looking at delaying four films into 2024. The report has also been confirmed by those who ply their trade as ‘Hollywood insiders’.
Unsurprisingly, three of the films aren’t based on intellectual property and are led by movie stars performances, exactly the kind of projects that studio executives are worried about releasing. That’s because the ongoing strike means that actors are prohibited from promoting their films and without movie stars pushing them in person and online, studios are rightly concerned that they won’t garner enough buzz to break even, much less make a profit.
The three films that fit the description above are Poor Things, Magazine Dreams and Next Goal Wins.
Poor Things is the highly-anticipated and latest film by Yorgos Lanthimos and boasts the kind of talented ensemble that Searchlight Pictures needs to harness to drive buzz for the film’s slated September release. Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, Margaret Qualley, Christopher Abbott, Ramy Youssef and Jerrod Carmichael all star.
Magazine Dreams seems like an easy pick for Searchlight considering it is led by Jonathan Majors whose ongoing legal issues mean that strike or no, he wouldn’t be out promoting the film. We imagine that by delaying the film, Searchlight are hoping that those problems are somehow resolved by the time the strike ends. Finally, Next Goal Wins is reportedly also facing another delay. The film, which shot all the way back in 2019, was delayed several times due to the pandemic and is is seemingly cursed (because at this point we’re running out of rational explanations).
The final film that Disney is said to be considering a delay for is the animation, Wish which is currently set for a November release date. With some stories circulating that the strike may yet last into 2024, if these films do face delays we’d imagine they won’t be the only ones. It’s starting to feel a little like that time during Covid when studios were looking at each other to see who would blink first before delaying major projects. We’ll bring you more on this story as we hear it.
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