Disney Updates It’s Movie Release Schedule With 3 New ‘Star Wars’ Movies, And Delays ‘Avatar 2’
We may be coming to the end of the Skywalker saga, but there is still a lot more ‘Star Wars’ incoming, as Disney nails down release dates for the next three movies set in a galaxy far far away. They have also updated the release dates for the upcoming ‘Avatar’ sequels, the blue alien franchise which they acquired as part of the Fox deal.
Their latest plan lays out their movie schedule all the way up to 2027. We kick off with ‘Avatar 2’ on 17th December 2021. That’s pushed back from the previously announced 2020 premiere date, but at this point, we’ve waited so long for a sequel to James Cameron’s 2009 movie, I don’t think another year will hurt too much. They will then release one ‘Avatar’ movie every other year, up to 2027… So that’s ‘Avatar 3’ on 22nd Dec 2023, ‘Avatar 4’ on 19th Dec 2025, then ‘Avatar 5’ on 22nd Dec 2027.
Over on the ‘Star Wars’ side, we have three as-yet-untitled ‘Star Wars’ movies coming on 16th Dec 2022, 20th Dec 2024 and 18th Dec 2026, alternating years with the ‘Avatar’ movies. We don’t know which of the ‘Star Wars’ movies these will be. We do know they had two sets of new films in development set in the ‘Star Wars’ universe – one trilogy from ‘The Last Jedi’ director Rian Johnson, and also a series of films from ‘Game of Thrones’ masterminds David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. As far as we currently know, both sets of films are still in development.
Outside of those two major franchises, the other Thanos in the room is, of course, Marvel. This is where things become tricker, as they not only have all their MCU films, but also a few leftover Fox ‘X-Men’ movies to deal with (along with a bunch of other Fox movie releases.) Firstly, ‘The New Mutants’, which is already rather delayed, has been pushed back again from it’s Aug 2019 release to 12th April 2020. It looks like the planned ‘Gambit’ movie, which was slated for 2020, has been scrapped entirely, along with all other future Fox/X-Men movies. That does make sense, as, at some point, Marvel is going to want to integrate mutants into the MCU. So we may see Gambit pop up again, but they would want to get all their mutant-ducks in a row before moving forward. What has yet to be announced are release dates for the solo ‘Black Widow’ movie, ‘The Eternals‘ and the ‘Shang-Chi’ movie, which are expected to arrive as part of Marvel’s “Phase 4”.
Outside of the main franchises, Fox’s Kevin Costner-Amanda Seyfried movie ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ moves up to 9th August 2019 from it’s previous Sept 2019 date; Brad Pitt astronaut drama ‘Ad Astra’ has moved from May 2019 to 20th September 2019; And Disney’s adaptation of ‘Artemis Fowl’ moves from August 2019 to 29th May 2020. We also have the addition of Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’, which gets a release on 18th December 2020, and Disney’s live-action ‘Cruella’, which will arrive 23rd December 2020.
And these are only the changes… Disney still has films such as ‘Frozen 2’, live-action ‘Aladdin’, ‘The Lion King’, and ‘Mulan’, ‘Toy Story 4‘, Fox’s ‘Dark Phoenix’ and of course, ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’, plus a host of other things coming… We’re not going to be short of entertainment for the next few years!
