Universal Pictures has delayed Fast and Furious 9 a full year to April 2021 - why? Recently, the World Health Organization officially classified COVID-19, better known as the coronavirus, as a worldwide pandemic. The outbreak has spread rapidly across the globe in the past four months since the virus was first reported in Wuhan, China. Since then, various world governments have implemented measures such as quarantines, travel restrictions, and school closures, to name but three. All of Italy, for instance, is now in lockdown, while the United States announced travel bans from the vast majority of Europe. Coronavirus has had a seismic impact on essentially every aspect of life, from politics to education to healthcare to food.
In the wider context of what is currently happening, discussing the world of movies and celebrity cannot help but feel somewhat frivolous, but the announcements made in fields like entertainment, sports, and so on do offer an insight into the short and long-term impacts this pandemic is having on the world. Major festivals such as South by South West were canceled, some areas have placed a ban on gatherings of 250 people or more, which makes things like music festivals and sporting games essentially impossible, and organizations like the NHL have preemptively suspended the season to stave off the potential spreading of coronavirus. Hollywood is a highly international business, one that relies on worldwide grosses and a finely tuned slate of releases, marketing, and production. The impact the coronavirus has had on it cannot be downplayed and will inevitably leave behind years of fallout.
One major example of this came when Universal revealed that it would be delaying the release of Fast and Furious 9, the 10th installment in the Fast and Furious franchise, by almost an entire year. The film, starring Vin Diesel, was set to be released in May 2020, but now it won't reach cinemas until April 2021. Fast and Furious 9 follows in the footsteps of the seven-month delay to the release of the new Bond movie, No Time To Die, as well as smaller titles such as A Quiet Place II and Peter Rabbit 2.
Hollywood is currently in panic mode, and rightly so. Nobody can afford to underestimate the impact of this virus and lives shouldn’t be put on the line for something as ultimately frivolous as a movie. Studios face unprecedented questions over insurance, personal responsibility, and the cold hard economics of doing business in the middle of a worldwide crisis. A movie like Fast and Furious 9, which is part of one of the most successful franchises and is especially popular in China, needs that international reach to make money. In many ways, it’s a series built more for those crowds than domestic ones. Given the lockdown in those key markets, particularly China, it makes sense to want to scale things back until the world returns to a semblance of normalcy.
Still, why delay it for close to a year, especially after a huge chunk of its marketing has already been released? Surely Universal risk losing audience interest by the time we get to April 2021? This is probably less a question of choice than one of necessity. The movie release calendars are often hard-fought battles between studios for prime spots that will ensure maximum audience exposure. A May 2020 release for Fast and Furious 9, at the beginning of the summer season, fits right in with that. If Universal were hoping they would be able to move the film to another slot in 2020, they would have found a lot of competition.
So far, Disney and Warner Bros. are staying pretty faithful to their big releases. Mulan has faced rumors of delays but nothing concrete. Right now, the most coveted slots on the slate are taken, at least for the time being. Moving Fast and Furious 9 into summer would put it up against Wonder Woman 1984, Pixar's Soul, and Top Gun: Maverick, all of which have similar audience crossovers, not to forget much-buzzed titles like Tenet.
April 2021 still isn’t ideal but it at least gives Universal a head over the competition for next year, especially as it seems ever-more-likely that other studios will follow suit. Plus, it was a release date they already carved out for Fast and Furious 10. So it was as easy a move for Universal as possible. We still don’t know how long the coronavirus will last and that uncertainty has meant the world has no option but to prepare for the worst. In terms of entertainment, Universal is playing it safe with Fast and Furious 9, and frankly, right now it’s better to be safe than sorry.