A Quiet Place and Fast & Furious sequels postponed due to coronavirus pandemic
The horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II and action thriller follow-up Fast & Furious 9 are being postponed over fears linked to the coronavirus pandemic.
The follow-up to the 2018 hit A
Quiet Place was due to launch globally from 18 March but director John Krasinski announced on Thursday on Instagram that it would be moving to an as-yet-unspecified date.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is that people have said our movie is one you have to see all together,” he wrote. “Well due to the ever-changing circumstances of what’s going on in the world around us, now is clearly not the right time to do that. As insanely excited as we are for you all to see this movie … I’m gonna wait to release the film until we CAN see it together! So here’s to our group movie date! See you soon!”
The first film made over $340m worldwide and the sequel was projected to open with at least $60m.
The announcement follows on from word that Fast & Furious 9 will move from May this year to April 2021 while the Bond thriller No Time to Die, romantic comedy The Lovebirds and kids sequel Peter Rabbit 2 have both abandoned their upcoming dates. Cinemas across the globe have been shutting out of fears of spreading the virus further, including all screens in Italy
and China.
While cinemas across the US remain open, a survey this week showed that 38% of American adults would support nationwide closures. The same report also showed that 21% of respondents signed up for a streaming service since January partly because of the coronavirus.
Last weekend saw underwhelming returns for Disney and Pixar’s new adventure Onward. Disney has yet to alter plans to release its live-action remake of Mulan on 27 March although, with a $200m budget, the film will rely heavily on international box office to make a profit.
It’s estimated that the pandemic will have a $5bn impact on the global box office.
appearance on this list in this fashion comedy movie based on the Lauren Weisberger novel, reportedly inspired by the terrifying fashion empress Anna Wintour. It is a comedy, but without the sharp, angular edges of satire or bleakness that might endanger the comfort factor. New York City is replete with glamour and gorgeousness as the location for this aspirational story: Anne Hathaway is the callow literature graduate from the sticks who somehow flukes a job at the colossally prestigious fashion magazine Runway edited by Streep’s terrifying Miranda Priestly, the boss from hell who enforces a Stockholm-Syndrome love on all her employees and on us, the audience. Stanley Tucci is wonderful as her long-serving, long-suffering senior executive and this was the film that launched the elegant Emily Blunt on the world, as the super-snobbish fashionista who is to be Hathaway’s unwilling guide.
1. Titanic (1997)
There can surely be no doubt as to the No 1 slot. As Liam Neeson says in Love Actually: “We need Kate and we need Leo and we need them now.” Cheesy it may be, but this film delivers weapons-grade feelgood – and, at well over three hours, it delivers an awful lot of it. Because, paradoxically, nothing says filmic comfort eating like screaming in terror and being plunged into the icy Atlantic ocean, resurfacing, discovering that for some reason the woman you are in love with somehow can’t scooch up on her bit of driftwood to let you on, and then going back down again, with Céline Dion in the background singing that her heart will go on. Kate Winslet found her moment of global greatness as Rose, the young well-born passenger in first class who is unhappily engaged to creepy Billy Zane (fated not to cover himself with glory once the trouble starts). Rose finds that she has a distinct spark with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack who has won his thirdclass ticket in a poker game and thinks himself the luckiest young fellow in the world to have got on board for this exciting maiden voyage – especially when he feels that Rose is in love with him, and secretly gets to paint her in the nude. (That’s her in the nude, not him.) It is amazing to think that just before this film was released, all the talk was about how it could be a disaster – how it was going to be like Lew Grade’s Raise the Titanic; what a tyrannical monster Cameron was to his cast etc – but the film’s instant rip-roaring success simply blew all this away. A film to lull you into a bovine stupor of wellbeing.