‘Mulan’ Release Date May Be Delayed Again
By George Robbins
Disney has had their hands full ever since this pandemic began back in the middle of March due to how large the company is as a whole. They’ve had to shut down their parks and delay many of the films that were meant to come out under the company name or one of the outside studios handling their films. On top of having to shut down parks and delay films, they have had to make sure that their new streaming service was properly managed in order to keep people entertained while they’ve been stuck in their homes. Now that July is approaching fast, they have their plans set up to allow them to reopen their parks to the public and it seems like their movie release dates are cemented in place. However, problems have arisen recently that make it seem as though they are going to have a harder time than originally thought.
The Disney Parks reopening their gates to the public has been a source of some criticism over the past few weeks due to a spike in overall Covid cases. Disney has already opened their Honk Kong Disneyland park on June 18th and their Disneyland Shanghai Park on May 11th, but this was possible because that part of the world has been dealing with the virus longer than we have and they haven’t had a spike in cases. As of now the plan involves the opening of Disney World and Disneyland in California by the middle of July with restrictions. There have been a lot of people who do not want this to happen right now, but Disney assured people that their new park pass system will help keep people safe. They will be opening the parks at Disney World a few days after one another and will have all of them opened relatively quickly.
Disneyland Paris has its own plan to reopen the park in phases in conjunction with the park pass system to limit people coming into the park. This is the idea behind what the parks stateside plan on doing, but there is no guarantee it will work as intended and this is a risk a lot of people do not want to take. The risk involved with opening up these parks again is similar to the risk that is currently plaguing movie theaters that are trying to open up again. Many movies, even ones that were meant to release later this year, have been delayed because of all of the new cases. This presents a problem for Disney who have a premiere that is meant to be coming up soon in July. Their movie ‘Mulan’ is supposed to have its premiere on July 24th in theaters, but now the question is if they will change the date.
It wouldn’t be all that difficult to understand if they decided to delay the release date of the movie, but the current release date gives them an edge in the market. As of now, the only two blockbuster level films that are set to premiere in July are ‘Mulan’ and ‘Tenet.’ While ‘Tenet’ was meant to be the first film that was, according to Christopher Nolan, supposed to bring people back into theaters, Warner Bros. delayed the film two weeks so it now has a July 31st release date. This means ‘Mulan’ is now the film that can be seen in all theaters first when they reopen in the middle of July, but the question is if it is worth it for them to release it. With the number of cases gradually increasing as time goes on, they may just end up delaying the film again.