Covid-19 hitting cinemas hard

In the end, not even the combined might of Her Majesty’s finest agent and a woman warrior could stand up to an invisible killer.

More than a dozen film openings have been put on hold as the coronavirus continues its inexorable spread worldwide.

Public gatherings are banned, and schools and borders are closed – as are cinemas across China, South Korea, Japan, Europe and the United States. The people’s health is of utmost importance.

Hollywood, like everyone, is scrambling to respond to the unfolding chaos.

More disrupted releases can be expected, adding to China’s inventory of scrapped Chinese New Year attractions Detective Chinatown 3, Lost In Russia, action drama The Rescue and fantasy animation Legend Of Deification.

Multiplexes may as well be shuttered. Whatever do they have left to show?

That’s a worry, for sure. Movies, though, are products of their times, and for each of the following blockbusters, the losses from the delays won’t just be economical.

1. NO TIME TO DIE

Original release date: April 9

Rescheduled date: Nov 25

The studio bosses presumably took the title to be good advice and earlier this month revoked James Bond’s licence to launch.

The 25th Bond mission was the first major title to be rescheduled, setting off shock waves through the industry and a domino effect on this year’s entertainment calendar.

It is Daniel Craig’s fifth and final tour of duty as the British secret agent, who concluded Spectre in 2015 by retiring to Jamaica.

The rescue of a kidnapped scientist returns him to espionage intrigue.

Speculation about Craig’s successor has been intensifying. Perhaps he will be a she, spydom’s most shameless womaniser recast as a woman?

And she may in fact be a “person of colour”, as hinted by one of the producers.

Will the social media excitement lose steam, now that Craig is staying on for another double-o-seven months?

2. A QUIET PLACE PART II

Original release date: March 19

Rescheduled date: To be announced

This eagerly anticipated sequel was rolling nicely towards its premiere. Tickets to a double-bill preview of A Quiet Place (2018) and A Quiet Place Part II at selected theatres were selling fast islandwide.

With six days to go, director John Krasinski announced the cancellation.

His science-fiction horror tells of a world overrun by sightless extraterrestrial creatures that hunt by sound.

In the wake of the tragedy in the first film, which was a critically adored hit, the family – headed by Krasinski and Emily Blunt as the parents – leave their farmhouse and roam a desolate land, encountering pockets of paranoid, hostile human survivors.

The monsters are still around, of course.

The doomsday images look eerily like today’s emptied cities under lockdown from a threat of equally terrifying randomness.

Will they lose their timely resonance after the pandemic?

3. FAST & FURIOUS 9

Original release date: May 22

Rescheduled date: April 2, 2021

The Fast & Furious was one big cosy family of drag-racers, with Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, the patriarch until Dwayne Johnson crashed the ensemble in 2011’s Fast Five, playing tough lawman Luke Hobbs.

There can be only so many bald alphas on a set. By 2016, while filming Fast & Furious 8, Diesel and Johnson were feuding.

The latter publicly called out certain male co-stars for their unprofessionalism, then departed with Jason Statham, a co-star he clearly did like, for Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. The spin-off earned US$750 million (S$1.07 billion) last year, while Fast & Furious 9 is finding itself stalled by the virus.

The postponement is imperative, as the international market has become crucial to Hollywood’s tent-pole action franchises, especially James Bond and Fast & Furious, and accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the grosses.

Nonetheless, has Diesel, in the meantime, lost the box office to Johnson? (Minus points for his cut-rate comic-book flick Bloodshot, currently in cinemas.)

4. MULAN

Original release date: March 26

Rescheduled date: To be announced

Chinese folk heroine Hua Mulan disguised herself as the son of an ageing warrior to replace him in the Imperial Army during the Hun invasion, circa the fifth century AD.

Liu Yifei stars in this Walt Disney Pictures rendition of the celebrated legend, a remake of the studio’s 1998 Mulan animation musical.

Director Niki Caro also has Donnie Yen, Jet Li and Gong Li in an exclusively Chinese cast and has ensured cultural fidelity by consulting mainland Chinese authorities and historians.

The martial arts war epic, at US$200 million, is the largest live-action feature helmed by a woman – or two, actually, not forgetting Caro’s assistant director.

It has the potential to be the template for ethnically inclusive, female-empowered big-budget film-making, but will it lose its zeitgeist moment?

5. THE NEW MUTANTS

Original release date: April 2

Rescheduled date: To be announced

Mulan aside, Walt Disney Pictures is looking for new dates for Antlers, a Guillermo del Toro-produced sci-fi horror flick (originally April 16), Black Widow (April 30) and The New Mutants.

Yes, that movie again.

The X-Men superhero adventure spin-off, since completing filming in 2017, has been repeatedly shelved – pushed from January 2018 to February last year, to August last year, to next month – due to rewrites, rumoured re-shoots and controversial casting.

It was to have started a teen franchise about five young mutants discovering their powers while held captive in a secret facility, the mutants plainly no longer young.

Will their ill-fated debut ever see the light of day?

Poor kids – how can they not have lost faith?

This article was first found here.