Black Widow Officially Delayed Until May 2021 and Actually, That Makes Sense

Finally, a movie delay that makes sense. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Black Widow has now been pushed to May 7, 2021. Along with that news comes a delay for all Marvel titles, with Shang-Chi moving to a July 9th release date and Eternals filling the November 5th slot.

But this, in my opinion, is a good move. Time and time again, we’ve come to face the reality of movies not bouncing back in 2020. They tried with Tenet, and it didn’t work out, and now movies are trying to find where they’ll fit when theaters do open back up. The problem is that instead of just waiting until it’s finally safe, they keep giving us these meaningless dates that everyone knows are too soon.

So Black Widow kicking back to a May slot of next year? It makes sense. Especially since, by then, we might actually be in a somewhat safer place to go back to the movie theaters—which, honestly, should have been the goal from the start.

I understand why the unattainable dates kept coming. There are shareholders and people behind the scenes who need to know when movies are supposed to be coming out, so instead of just saying “we don’t know,” they give dates that they can at least try to theoretically meet. But, after the third time a movie was delayed, you’d think they’d start to think of a new strategy.

And Black Widow and the Marvel movies are the first to just push the release dates out far enough that it could maybe work out for the better. Like, look, I love Diana Prince most of all, but these small delays for Wonder Woman 1984 are just annoying me more than anything because it barely matters. We are not going to be in a movie theater by Christmas.

So, Disney and Marvel taking the world at large into consideration and just pushing back to 2021 release dates? I kind of respect it. Sure, it’s still a grab for money, but at least they aren’t trying to push a movie out right now and have fans putting themselves in danger to see it (looking at you Tenet).

To be honest, I can’t wait to see a return to a June release date for Wonder Woman 1984, and so on and so forth (which should have happened when we realized things were not getting better in the United States), and maybe then we can start to reboot the film industry. Until any of that happens, I’m glad that Marvel recognized that Black Widow was not going to come out in 2020 and yeah, it sucks that this is the first year since 2009 without a Marvel movie, but it’s what we have to do to stay safe and we’ll survive.

Can’t wait to finally see Natasha Romanoff’s journey once it is safe!

(image: Marvel Entertainment)

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