Editorial Staff
Disney today released a bunch o’ changes to their upcoming sked – with many a tentpole pushed back.
Here’s a summary :
Marvel
Likely due to the delays and hiccups the productions are suffering as a result of the ongoing WGA strike, Disney has had to push back a slew of their Marvel tentpoles.
Production delays on Blade and Thunderbolts have led to Walt’s co pushing the latter to Dec. 20, 2024, while the reboot of the Wesley Snipes classic goes to Feb. 14, 2025.
Also being tossed to another slot on the calendar, Captain America: Brave New World is moving from May 3, 2024, to July 26, 2024, Fantastic Four is now May 2, 2025. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is getting pushed back twelve months, from May 2, 2025, to May 1, 2026. That flick fills the spot vacated by Avengers: Secret Wars, which is jumping from May 1, 2026, to May 7, 2027.
In better news for superhero fans, Deadpool 3 has been pushed ahead from Nov. 8, 2024, to May 3, 2024 – likely because it isn’t really connected in storyline to those other Marvel movies.
Avatar
Likely also due to the ongoing strike, though they’re using a “we need more time to make this movie perfect” excuse, Fox has pushed the next three Avatar movies by a year. The fifth film in that instalment will now land – get this! – 2031. Yep, I’ll be very old then. You?
Avatar 3? out Dec. 19, 2025; Avatar 4 is Dec. 21, 2029, and Avatar 5 lands Dec. 19, 2031.
“Each ‘Avatar’ film is an exciting but epic undertaking that takes time to bring to the quality level we as filmmakers strive for and audiences have come to expect,” producer Jon Landau posted on his socials after the news hit. “The team is hard at work and can’t wait to bring audiences back to Pandora in December 2025.”
You can see the most recent of the Avatar films, Avatar : The Way of Water now on Disney+.
Star Wars
The recently-announced Star Wars film set fifteen years after The Rise of Skywalker from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and writer Steven Knight has been skedded for release.
Disney announced today that the untitled film will hit theaters December 2026.
In the new film, Daisy Ridley will reprise he role as Rey Skywalker, this time attempting to populate the galaxy with a new race of Jedis.
While speaking to IGN recently, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy shared some new details on the story.
“Well we’re 15 years out from Rise of Skywalker, so we’re post-war, post-First Order, and the Jedi are in disarray,” Kennedy confirmed. “There’s a lot of discussion around, ‘Who are the Jedi? What are they doing? What’s the state of the galaxy?’ She’s attempting to rebuild the Jedi Order, based on the books, based on what she promised Luke, so that’s where we’re going.”
Two other Star Wars films announced at the event are a James Mangold (Logan) directed movie about the first Jedi and another from Dave Filoni that will continue after the events of Disney+’s “The Mandalorian”.
Further, two separate Star Wars movies will land May 22, 2026 and Dec. 17, 2027. Disney hasn’t announced anything about those two flicks.
Moana
The live-action Moana from Dwayne Johnson will be released on June 27, 2025
Alien
Originally said to be have been commissioned for one of Disney’s streaming platforms – the consensus was that it would be available on Hulu as opposed to Disney+, since fellow horror franchise instalment Prey (a prequel to Predator) was – Fede Alvarez’s Alien : Romulus (just a tentative title, apparently – but we’ll go with it too for now) has now been confirmed for a big screen now.
Disney announced some scheduling changes today, and amongst the additions, subtractions, delays, and tweaks, the addition of the Alien film to the 2024 slate.
According to the House of Mouse the new film will open August 16, 2024. With Disney having to push back a couple of their big Marvel superhero movies, due to the ongoing writer’s strike (and looming actor’s strike), it’s likely they’ve had to fill some gaps in the 2024 schedule; makes sense, they’d plug the Alien movie in there.
Alien : Romulus, which is reportedly akin to the original series of films with a group of humans encountering the nasty face-hugger, stars Cailee Spaney. Completed earlier this year in the UK, it’s a standalone story – set on a ship, Romulus – but will reportedly feature nods to the other films in the franchise. Ridley Scott is an executive producer.
