Marvel Studios has announced the new Black Widow release date. The highly anticipated Natasha Romanoff standalone movie will be released on November 6th. This was the release date for the Eternals movie, which has now been pushed back, along with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4 projects. There was speculation that Disney and Marvel Studios were toying with the idea of releasing Black Widow and Mulan digitally, in an effort to skip theaters, but that is obviously not going to happen at this point in time.
The Eternals movie has been pushed to February 12th, 2021, while Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will now open May 7th, 2021. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which was probably going to get pushed back anyway, will now open on November 5th, 2021 and Thor: Love and Thunder has moved to February 18th, 2022. Looking ahead to the MCU’s Phase 5, Black Panther 2 will still debut May 6th, 2022, while Captain Marvel 2, which previously did not have a firm release date, has been set for July 8th, 2022.
At this time, it is unclear when movie theaters are going to be able to open their doors again. Some have predicted that sometime in June is likely, though it is not guaranteed. AMC might not even open their doors again after their latest credit rating was revealed. With that being said, Marvel Studios made a wise decision in pushing everything back on their calendar. Black Widow could have come out in the late summer or early fall, but there’s really no predicting what the entertainment business will look like at that time. Pushing things further may bum out fans, but there was really no avoiding this situation.
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige announced the MCU Phase 4 titles at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con and received an enthusiastic response from the world. In addition to the big screen titles, Feige also spoke about all of the Disney+ TV shows that are on the way too. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision were the first to go into production, but it’s unclear if they will meet their release dates now that production has been halted. It is believed that they were mostly complete, but there has not been an official announcement as of this writing.
MCU fans are going to have to wait a bit longer to see some of their favorite superheroes on the big screen. This could end up being excellent news for last-minute story revisions and other things that may need to get changed, meaning we’ll get a better movie when the dust settles. Hopefully the world’s current situation will pass in the near future so that people can get back to some kind of normalcy. Variety was the first to announce the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4 news.
