DreamWorks has bumped up its Trolls sequel, Trolls World Tour, to take the April release date barely vacated by No Time to Die. As the world scrambles to contain the coronavirus, the disease's global outbreak has already impacted the realm of pop culture in surprising ways. Just today, in fact, MGM caught the rest of the film industry off-guard by announcing it's decided to push the next James Bond movie, No Time to Die, back seven months from April to November. This news came as a big shock, considering how heavily the studio has promoted Daniel Craig's final appearance as Agent 007 in recent weeks.
For the time being, however, other Hollywood studios are holding off on postponing their spring tentpoles to a later date. In fact, despite the rapid spread of the coronavirus over the last month, Disney and Pixar's animated movie Onward actually saw its box office projections rise this week following its early positive reviews. Elsewhere, another animated film has since been moved up to fill the empty spot left behind by No Time to Die's departure.
Fandango's Erik Davis is confirming DreamWorks and Universal have moved the animated sequel Trolls World Tour up a week from April 17 to take No Time to Die's former date on April 10. At the moment, the movie is the only major wide release scheduled to open domestically that weekend.
Thanks to its release date change, Trolls World Tour will no longer have to compete directly with StudioCanal's The Secret Garden adaptation (which STXfilms is distributing stateside) for attention from families when it debuts on April 17. At the same time, it does mean the latest Trolls movie will have to face-off against fellow family sequel Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway in its second weekend of release. The original Trolls did stronger business in the U.S. than Peter Rabbit did ($154 million vs. $115 million) despite grossing a little less worldwide ($347 million vs. $351 million), but their followups should be pretty evenly matched commercially. Critics were similarly kind to both movies and praised them for being decent kids entertainment, so it will be interesting to see how their sequels fare by comparison, especially premiering one after the other.
Obviously, the situation with Trolls World Tour and No Time to Die is another thing. James Bond has always been a global franchise and the latest installment stood to suffer a heavier blow by staying in April than Trolls World Tour, considering China - the world's second largest moviegoing market behind the U.S. - is basically shut down until further notice because of the coronavirus. Likewise, the Trolls sequel and No Time to Die are targeting completely different demographics, so it's not like the former suddenly has a much better shot at being a commercial success. That said, Trolls World Tour certainly won't be damaged by Bond 25 moving away either, and it and the rest of April's new releases now have more room to breathe... pending the next shocking coronavirus related development, anyway.
Source: Fandango
