At this stage, movie fans all over the world are used to widespread release date changes, even if more high profile titles than at any point over the last eighteen months have been coming to theaters on a regular basis. In fact, nobody was too surprised when Venom: Let There Be Carnage was shunted back another three weeks to October 15th yesterday, when the most recent trailer had tellingly omitted a specific big screen bow.
However, Disney CEO Bob Chapek still managed to get Marvel Cinematic Universe supporters worked up when he referred to Chloe Zhao’s Eternals as a 2022 film. The cosmic sci-fi superhero blockbuster had already been delayed by an entire year to November 5th, 2021, and the lack of any new footage or promo materials since the teaser trailer dropped in May hardly alleviated those concerns.
Fortunately, the business-minded Chapek was talking about the fiscal year and not the calendar one, but as you can see below, that was more than enough to set some alarm bells ringing on social media.
It’ll be very interesting to see how Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings performs at the box office now that it’s been confirmed as a theatrical exclusive, especially looking at how Black Widow‘s earnings cratered after a record-breaking first weekend, but the Scarlett Johansson lawsuit was probably more than enough to dissuade the Mouse House from sending the martial arts fantasy to Premier Access so late in the day.
As things stand, Eternals is coming to big screens everywhere on November 5th, but Chapek’s wording did manage to cause many hearts to skip a beat when he first made the announcement.
