Dave Bauista's action-comedy My Spy has been acquired by Amazon and will go straight to streaming, skipping its planned theatrical release. Directed by Peter Segal, the film stars the Guardians of the Galaxy actor as a gruff CIA operative who is blackmailed into teaching a nine-year old girl (Chloe Coleman) the tricks of his trade after she catches him spying on her family. It has already been delayed three times since its trailer premiered at CinemaCon last year and was most recently scheduled to open domestically in mid-April. Of course, that was before the coronavirus pandemic led to theaters closing around the world.
Most of the movies on the release calendar for April have either been indefinitely delayed or postponed to a date later this year, in anticipation of the COVID-19 outbreak being contained by then. Curiously, however, My Spy has been holding onto its April 17 date up until the time of writing, leading everyone to wonder what its distributor, STX, is planning to do with it. As it turns out, the answer is sell it off to a major streaming service.
Screen Rant can confirm My Spy has been acquired by Amazon Studios and will head to Amazon Prime at a date to be announced down the line. It's actually the second movie originally scheduled for a theatrical release this month to go straight to streaming instead, following Paramount's The Lovebirds (which the studio sold to Netflix in late March).
Last month, shortly after theaters began closing across the U.S., the National Association of Theater Owners issued a statement assuring the majority of delayed 2020 movies would still hit the big screen eventually. That plan hasn't changed either, with would-be blockbusters like Disney's Mulan and Black Widow having since been rescheduled for later in 2020 after being postponed from their spring release dates. At the same time, My Spy and The Lovebirds aren't the only exceptions to the rule. Universal is still moving full speed ahead with its plan to drop Trolls World Tour directly on-demand this Friday, April 10, rather than releasing it in theaters simultaneously. In addition, Disney recently announced it's sending Artemis Fowl straight to Disney+ and skipping a theatrical run.
So far, all the 2020 films that've gone straight to streaming were either smaller movies (like the $18 million My Spy) or risky box office bets like Artemis Fowl, save for Trolls World Tour. For the time being, though, that's not a viable option for big-budget tentpoles. As was recently discussed when a report emerged claiming Warner Bro. was considering dropping Wonder Woman 1984 directly onto VOD, box office grosses are currently essential to studios' ability to turn a profit on their biggest films. That being said, it's generally agreed Hollywood will never be the same after the coronavirus, no matter how things play out from here. At the very least, projects like My Spy are now more likely to go direct to streaming from the get-go moving forward.
Source: Amazon Studios