Trailers for the latest 007 movie, No Time to Die, have been all over the Internet since late 2019. Its theatrical release has slipped from April, to November, to April 2021. And MGM says it will now slip again, to Oct. 8, a year and a half past the film’s first scheduled premiere.
The delay is yet another consequence of the pandemic, which has closed public entertainment venues around the world. The film industry has been struggling with the calculus of whether to release films to a reduced number of theaters with fewer patrons, or put them on streaming services, or not to release them at all until life returns to some sort of normalcy.
For studio blockbusters — which with marketing expenses can cost hundreds of millions of dollars — the decision of when to release is especially fraught and sales strategies have varied.
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