So grain of salt rumor, but apparently Disney IS considering releasing Mulan and Black Widow to VOD (not Disney+). I wouldn't have even thought this was a possiblity even as recently as yesterday, but the more I think about it, the more it becomes impossible to just push off every movie - the slate is gonna be jam packed from just Disney movies when theaters reopen if they hold everything, never mind the rest of the industry. Disney is desperate to save money and recoup all the money they can right now, and they've already run the marketing campaigns for Mulan and a lot for Black Widow (if moved back, they'd have to dump more into marketing).
China tried to reopen their theaters and they had to close again. Things aren't going well and I don't think we'll see theaters open until the fall at this point. Maybe they decide to move back the entire Marvel slate and slip Black Widow into The Eternals spot, but that still leaves them with big problems elsewhere. Lots of things are going to have to get dumped to VOD and then Disney+ or Hulu. You guys have to remember that they don't just have their Disney slate, but a large 20th Century slate as well to deal with.
Basically it's just common sense that some things are gonna be forced onto VOD with Disney juggling about 28 theatrical films this year between Walt Disney Pictures, Marvel, 20th Century and Searchlight.
Every studio has considered releasing their movies digitally; even Wonder Woman had talks a few days before moving to August. The loss of 3-4 months on the release schedule is going to cause some movies to go digital, but so far, it's just been movies that were tracking poorly (Trolls and The Lovebirds). I could see Disney wanting to put Mulan on digital because most of its marketing budget was spent already, but that also places it in a prime spot for whenever theaters reopen and studios don't want to start new marketing campaigns in an uncertain climate. These are (some of) my predictions for the release schedule:
Everything remaining in May and June gets pulled. Artemis Fowl goes straight to Disney+. Spongebob may go straight to streaming; it's going to be very hard for Paramount to find room on the schedule and they may not have the money. Soul moves to Thanksgiving and pushes Raya to 2021. Candyman will release sometime in October. Top Gun moves to 2021. King of Staten Island and Greyhound will get fall festival pushes and go from there. Titles from smaller studios will be sprinkled around the rest of the year (A24 will probably push Green Knight to late summer).
Disney puts Mulan in Free Guy's July 3 release date. Free Guy will get pushed to Early 2021.
Sony swaps Ghostbusters Afterlife and Peter Rabbit on July 10 and August 7, and Universal shelves The Purge until 2021. A Quiet Place returns to this date.
WB delays Tenet to October and replaces it with In the Heights on July 17. Disney keeps Bob's Burgers here.
Jungle Cruise and Morbius keep their dates on the 24 and 31, but some of the smaller titles from April and May will be sprinkled in to fill screens. Antlers, Bad Trip, My Spy, and Antebellum are solid bets to be placed here. The French Dispatch may also go wide immediately instead of starting in limited if Searchlight doesn't delay its release.
August will probably look like it does right now alongside the changes I mentioned above. The other major movie I can see dropping in August is Spiral.
Black Widow is slotted in the first weekend of September to keep the rest of the MCU on track.
Basically, there will be a very weird mix of delayed films alongside movies that were always scheduled for these particular dates. Some of the big budget movies that I predict are getting delays to 2021 like Top Gun and Free Guy are good for filling spots where movies that were supposed to enter production now get delayed from.
