“Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel to Tom Cruise’s 1986 classic, will have to wait until next summer to take flight.
The action adventure, from Paramount and Skydance, has pushed its Dec. 23 release date and will now open July 2, 2021.
A few months earlier, “A Quiet Place Part II” will hit the big screen. The horror sequel, starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, has also been delayed from Sept. 4 to April 23, 2021.
As part of Paramount’s release date shakeup on Thursday, “Jackass” has been pushed from July 2021 to Sept. 3, 2021. “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” a follow-up to this year’s box office smash, will open on April 8, 2022. “Under the Boardwalk” has been added to the calendar on July 22, 2022 and “The Tiger’s Apprentice” was moved back a year from Feb. 11, 2022 to Feb. 10, 2023.
“We truly believe that there is no movie-viewing experience like the one enjoyed in theatres,” said Paramount’s president of domestic distribution Chris Aronson, and president of international theatrical distribution Mark Viane. “We are committed to the theatrical experience and our exhibition partners, and want to stress that we are confident that, when the time comes, audiences everywhere will once again enjoy the singular joy of seeing Paramount films on the big screen.”
“A Quiet Place 2” was one of the first major movies pulled from release as cases of coronavirus began to spread in the United States. It was originally scheduled to open in March, but the studio moved it to Sept. 6 in the hopes that movie theaters across North America would be able to resume operations before then. But uncertainty over when movie theaters — which first shuttered in March — will be able to reopen has only intensified as the pandemic continues to rapidly escalate across the country.
It’s yet another sign that a nationwide return to moviegoing may be further delayed by a worsening public health situation. The film delays comes days after Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller “Tenet” and hours after Disney’s “Mulan” were taken off release calendars. While those films had been long positioned to help revive moviegoing, sources say that Paramount did not want “A Quiet Place Part II” to have the pressure of being the first new movie out of the gate during the pandemic.
“A Quiet Place” became sleeper hit for Paramount when it debuted in 2018, earning $340 million globally. Krasinski returned to direct the sequel, while Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe will reprise their roles from the original. “A Quiet Place Part 2” again sees their family trapped by the boundaries of silence as they face the terrors of the outside world.
“Top Gun: Maverick” cost over $150 million to make, so Paramount is counting on hefty ticket sales in order to turn a profit. The delay was in part because of scheduling conflicts for Cruise, who returns to the cockpit in “Maverick” 30 years after the original film. Cruise is expected to film the next two “Mission: Impossible” movies when Paramount would need him to promote “Top Gun: Maverick.” By postponing it until the following summer, it frees up Cruise to embark on one of his trademark global promotional campaigns to tout the movie and his his death-defying stunts. Cruise famously hit up three cities across two continents to premiere the 2014 release of “Edge of Tomorrow.”
More to come…