A fall movie season, like everything else, in flux

The fall movie season — usually a reliable rhythm and cozy autumn comfort — is this year, like much of the past 18 months, a little disorienting. On the way are movies once planned to open as far back as April 2020, like “No Time to Die,” summer movies that hope to find better conditions in autumn, and films that have been shot and edited during the pandemic.

What has coalesced is a movie mishmash — something much more robust than last fall’s cobbled together, mostly virtual fall movie season — a season that stretched all the way to the Oscars in April. But the recent rise in COVID-19 cases due to the delta variant has added new uncertainty to a time Hollywood had once hoped would be nearing normality.

The unpredictability of the conditions is universally shared but acutely felt at studios like Sony that even through the pandemic have remained largely committed to exclusive theatrical releases. While Disney (with Disney+) and Warner Bros. (with HBO Max) have sought to hedge their bets and boost subscribers to their streaming services with dayand-date releases in 2021, Sony, Universal, Paramount and MGM (home to Bond) — with various windowing strategies — have mostly stuck to theater-first plans.

In all the movies coming this fall — among them “The Last Duel” (Oct. 15), “Dune” (Oct. 22), “Eternals” (Nov. 5), “House of Gucci” (Nov. 24) —nothing may be quite as tense as the ever-unfolding drama around old-fashioned, butts-in-the-seats moviegoing. Citing the delta-driven surge, Paramount has uprooted from the season, booting “Top Gun: Maverick” to next year. But on the heels of some promising box-office performances, many of the fall’s top movies and leading Oscar hopefuls are only doubling down on theatrical, and the cultural impact that comes with it. Even if it’s a gamble.