In the original, better, timeline, we would have been gearing up to catch Black Widow in theaters in a little over a month. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Scarlett Johansson’s first solo outing in the MCU had its release delayed. For the past few weeks, we’ve been wondering what Marvel was planning to do with the movie, but at last, they’ve now announced their new schedule, telling us exactly how long we have to wait to see it.
As fans expected, the delay of Black Widow has had a knock-on effect on the rest of the franchise’s Phase 4 line-up. So what’s happening is that the spy-flavored superhero flick is now occupying the November 6th date that was originally filled by The Eternals. This means that we’ll only have the one MCU film in cinemas this year, which is the first time this has happened since Iron Man 2 all the way back in 2010.
This also means that instead of just four weeks, we now have another seven months to wait until we get to see Black Widow at long last. There’s no way around it, that’s a huge blow, but clearly Disney and Marvel thought hard about this and decided it was the best plan of action. Scheduling a release any earlier is risky at this stage, as it may have be cancelled again. November should be a safe bet, though.
Of course, there’d been a call to simply drop the film on a streaming service on its initial due date and leave it at that. Even star David Harbour advocated the studio taking this route. It always seemed hard to swallow that they’d forego a cinematic release, though, so it’s no surprise that they’ve ultimately elected to keep it in theaters, even at the expense of their original schedule.
After Black Widow finally arrives this November, The Eternals will then follow on February 12th, 2021. Shang-Chi was supposed to drop on that date, but now it’s filling Doctor Strange 2′s spot, and so on and so on. In other words, mark your calendars accordingly, folks.
