Apparently Black Widow is still getting a theatrical release, as rumors surfaced earlier offering Disney might be going the video-on-demand route due to the coronavirus shutting down movie theaters worldwide.
CBM claims to have reached out to “a contact at Disney” who says Black Widow is “definitely” getting a theatrical release at some point, meaning in theaters and not VOD.
The site does mention they don’t know when Black Widow will be released and even says chances are Disney and Marvel Studios aren’t completely certain about things themselves, given the current situation.
The earlier rumor was from YouTuber Grace Randolph who took to Twitter to state “apparently Disney IS considering releasing not just Black Widow but also Mulan straight to streaming.”
Randolph did note that “price points, purchase vs rental, when to Disney Plus all still up in the air. Developing…”
Black Widow, more impacted by Coronavirus
Worth a mention is that Marvel Studios essentially canceled the Black Widow release date (May 1) as a new release date has yet to be announced.
We should also add that today saw President Trump extend the social distancing guidelines by another 30 days, until the end of April, so, more than likely, movie theaters won’t be open until at the least May.
Warner Bros. has already moved the June 5 release date for Wonder Woman 1984 to August 14.
Regarding when Black Widow might see the light of day, it could be at any time, as it’s been said Black Widow doesn’t impact Marvel’s Phase 4 movies, so Marvel could release the flick anytime they want, as it is a prequel set in the past.
More worrisome than Black Widow for Marvel might be Shang-Chi, which is supposed to be released in February 2021, but it’s filming has been placed on hold in Australia due to the coronavirus, and it has been reported Disney is losing upwards of $300k a day by not filming.
Marvel’s Disney Plus shows are also on hold including The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision and Loki, with the latter two directly tieing into Doctor Strange 2, but it has been reported Doctor Strange 2 is presently safe.
Randolph did bring up a good point about potential VOD releases in that the studios (i.e. Disney) may want to release flicks on VOD in order to bring in a much-needed revenue stream.
