Disney has delayed its Jungle Cruise movie by a year to Summer 2021. As everyone is well aware, the coronavirus pandemic has had an enormous impact on the entertainment industry in a very short amount of time. Over the last couple weeks alone, numerous films planned for release in March, April, May, June, and even early July have been either indefinitely delayed or postponed to later this year or 2021 over concerns about the virus. Marvel Studios has even gone so far as to change its entire Phase 4 MCU movie slate, beginning with Black Widow and Eternals.
Among the Summer 2020 films that've been hanging onto their release date so far is Jungle Cruise, a big screen adaptation of the popular Disney theme park ride starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Johnson recently acknowledged it was a real possibility the movie would be delayed because of all the other release date changes of late, even if theaters have reopened for business by the time its original spot in late July rolls around. Unsurprisingly, that's exactly what happened today.
In a press release, Disney announced sweeping changes to its release slate across the board on through to 2022. As a result, Jungle Cruise has moved back a whole year to July 30, 2021, with its most recent release date (July 24, 2020) going to the studio's live-action Mulan instead. The latter was previously scheduled to open in late March this year, but was pulled shortly before then when the COVID-19 outbreak took a turn for the worse.
This is the second release date change for Jungle Cruise overall, following its previous delay from October 2019 to July 2020. In that case, however, the change had as much to do with Disney having to schedule all the movies it owns around each other as much as anything else. By all accounts, Jungle Cruise was ready to go this summer and probably would've been a big hit, had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic. For that reason, it makes sense for Disney to keep the movie as a summer release, albeit for 2021 instead. With Indiana Jones 5 having only just moved out of July 2021 to Summer 2022, that also leaves Jungle Cruise as the only retro-style swashbuckling action-adventure scheduled to open that month.
Judging by the film's marketing, Disney is really banking on Jungle Cruise becoming the next Pirates of the Caribbean and giving them a brand-new franchise to add to their collection. It's clearly part of the reason they decided to shift it out of 2020 altogether and release it well after the coronavirus has been (hopefully) contained for good. Even with Indiana Jones 5 out of the way, the film still faces some big competition next summer, with Spider-Man: Homecoming 3 and Mission: Impossible 7 also scheduled to arrive in the same month. But, with the latter's production on hold for the time being and Homecoming 3 likely to be delayed so Tom Holland can make Uncharted first, there's a real chance Jungle Cruise will be the only one of the trio which ultimately sticks to its current spot.
Source: Disney