Marvel Studios announces they’re delaying the release date for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness an additional four months, pushing its release back until early 2022. Recently, every studio has announced a rescheduled slate of release dates in response to the ongoing situation concerning the outbreak of COVID-19. With movie theaters around the world still closed and no clear plan for when they’ll begin reopening, studios are doing their best to predict when their upcoming release can safely arrive in theaters.
For Disney and Marvel, this has been a tricky task given the sheer number of projects the MCU has in the production pipeline. As it stands now, only one MCU movie is set to release in theaters this year, Black Widow. The other planned 2020 release, Eternals, moved to early 2021, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings moved back to May 2021, and Doctor Strange 2 (which had previously held that prime May date) was pushed back to November. Now, though, Doctor Strange 2 is being delayed again.
Today, Sony announced a string of release date changes to their upcoming slate, including the announcement that Spider-Man 3 (a co-production between Marvel and Sony) is now taking the November 5, 2021 date. As a result of that change, Disney and Marvel have announced Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is getting pushed back another four months and will now release on March 25, 2022.
While the four month delay isn’t a significant change on its own, when combined with the previous six month delay, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now looking to release almost a whole year after its originally set date. This delay, however, could wind up being beneficial for the film. Behind-the-scenes, Doctor Strange 2 has undergone another change of a different kind, losing its original director, Scott Derrickson, over creative differences and hiring Sam Raimi as his replacement. With the film now set to release roughly a year later than originally planned, Raimi has more time to settle in and make a movie that hopefully both Marvel and he will be happy with.
The delay of Doctor Strange 2’s release isn’t just pushing the movie further back in Phase 4 of the MCU, it’s also swapping its position with another movie – Thor: Love and Thunder. Under the previous Phase 4 schedule, Doctor Strange 2 was leading into Thor 4, but now it’s leapfrogged right over it and will release after. While plot details about either movie remain under wraps, this switch does imply their stories don’t have much impact on each other seeing as the order they’re presented in can be so easily flipped. Then again, it may just be a case of wait and see given how a movie’s hold on a release dates is tenuous at best these days.
Source: Screenrant, by SARAH MORAN