‘F9: The Fast Saga’ and ‘Minions’ Delayed Yet Again
For a movie about fast people, it sure is taking its time coming to theaters.
Sorry, Fast and Furious family, there’s more bad news to report for your favorite franchise. F9: The Fast Saga, the long-awaited next installment in the, uh, Fast Saga, will not premiere as scheduled in May. The movie will now open in theaters on June 25. The movie has already been postponed for more than a year; prior to the coronavirus pandemic, F9 was expected to debut in theaters on May 22, 2020.
Last spring, Universal made the then-shocking decision to wait an entire year to release the film, rather than force it into theaters before audiences were ready to return. Now it seems as if expecting theaters to be back a year later was too optimistic. (Although if they’re not back by late May, will they really be up to full strength by late June? I guess we’ll see.)
The news is even worse for fans of Minions. Universal’s pushed back the next installment in the, uh, Minions Saga to 2022. (It’s technically titled Minions: The Rise of Gru.) Previously expected to premiere on July 2, 2021, the movie will now open in theaters on the following July 1.
Fast and Furious and Minions represent two of the biggest franchises in Universal’s library; they not only generate hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket revenue, they also appear on merchandise and in many licensing deals. Both have rides as Universal’s theme parks. A flop from either of these movies would be a massive loss for the studio, hence their repeated decisions to delay the movies as opposed to, say, shoving them on Peacock.
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