Update: Paramount has further delayed A Quiet Place Part II to April 23, 2021. Original article is as follows:
Paramount has rescheduled A Quiet Place 2 for an early September release date after it was delayed because of the coronavirus. The COVID-19 outbreak has led to theater closures across the globe in recent weeks, in an effort to prevent further spread of the virus. Because of this, studios have pulled their biggest spring and early summer 2020 movies off the official release calendar, including would-be blockbusters like Mulan and Black Widow. Sony has even gone so far to pull its entire slate from June to August, in anticipation of business being slow even after theaters reopen in the coming months (maybe).
John Krasinski's sequel to A Quiet Place was one of the first movies to see its release date indefinitely delayed when things took a turn for the worse about a week into March. Now, as part of a larger update to their 2020 release slate, Paramount has gone and settled on a new date for A Quiet Place 2 this year, rather than delaying it to 2021.
The studio has announced A Quiet Place 2 will now open in U.S. theaters on September 4, 2020. It's also reshuffled the animated sequel, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, from Memorial Day weekend (May 22) to July 31 and postponed Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick from June to December.
Its new release date means A Quiet Place 2 will go head to head with the Monster Hunter video game movie at the box office. The latter has already finished post-production, so it probably won't move unless a more promising spot opens up for it in the next few months. That may well happen too, as studios continue to reposition their 2020 films in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. With people helping to flatten the curve by practicing social distancing, the hope is the worldwide box office will be fully up and running again well before Labor Day rolls around. In the best-case scenario, theaters would reopen sometime in June, but even that's looking shaky right now. For that reason, Paramount is smart to give A Quiet Place 2 some extra distance between then and its new date.
While something like A Quiet Place 2 would normally make more sense as a mid-summer release, it's clear by now the 2020 summer movie season simply isn't going to happen. Even if theaters reopen for business in two months, studies indicate many people will be hesitant to return to public events right away (and fairly so). That's all the more reason for Paramount to try its hand at a run in September instead, where A Quiet Place 2 will face competition from movies like The Conjuring 3 and the Kingsmen prequel, in addition to Monster Hunter. None of those titles are as big as Krasinski's sequel, which puts the latter in a good position to thrive there.
Source: Paramount