STX has pushed the Chadwick Boseman-led crime thriller 21 Bridges back two months from September to a November 2019 release date. Founded in 2014, STX Entertainment has been producing and/or releasing films for the past four years and already has a number of critical darlings (like The Gift, The Edge of Seventeen, and Molly's Game) under its belt. Unfortunately, it's also released several critical and/or commercial duds in that same time, ranging from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets to The Happytime Murders.
2019 has been a similarly uneven year for STX so far. Their Intouchables remake, The Upside, was an unexpected box office hit in January, but their animated UglyDolls movie only grossed $27 million on a $45 million budget this past May, and failed to impress critics overall. They've since delayed a number of their films to either late 2019 or 2020, including the horror sequel Brahms: The Boy II and Dave Bautista action-comedy My Spy. Now, Chadwick Boseman's 21 Bridges has also been delayed (again) by a couple months.
Deadline is reporting that STX has pushed 21 Bridges back from September 27 to November 22 this year, having already delayed the movie once before from its original July release date. The outlet reports that the decision was made after the film's new trailer got a strong response at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 (where it was screened during producers Anthony and Joe Russo's Hall H panel).
Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (Deepwater Horizon) and Adam Mervis (The Philly Kid) and directed by Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones), 21 Bridges stars Boseman as Andre Davis, an NYPD detective who takes extreme measures to capture a pair of cop killers (Stephan James and Taylor Kitsch) and closes all of Manhattan's 21 bridges to prevent them from escaping the area. Prior to its second release date delay, the film was set to open against Blumhouse's action-horror thriller The Hunt and a week before Todd Phillips' much-hyped Joker. Instead, 21 Bridges will now face-off with Frozen 2, the Fred Rogers drama A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and Blake Lively's action-thriller Rhythm Section over this year's pre-Thanksgiving frame.
As far as as its box office prospects are concerned, 21 Bridges has a decent, but shaky, shot at success on its new launch date. The crime thriller is clearly being marketed to older audiences, so there won't be a lot of overlap between its target demographic and the families that head out to see the Frozen sequel that same weekend. Rhythm Section should provide some direct competition, though, so word of mouth could be the deciding factor when it comes to those two genre movies. 21 Bridges will also have to battle buzzed-about films like Rian Johnson's murder mystery Knives Out in its second week, so it needs to make a strong impression right out of the gate. Otherwise, it'll risk going down as yet another misfire for STX.
Source: Deadline
