Fans will have to wait until next year to see the sequels to “A Quiet Place” and “Top Gun.”
Both movies were part of a release date shakeup from Paramount on Thursday night. “A Quiet Place Part 2,” starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, will release in theaters on April 23, 2021, instead of Sept. 6, 2020. “Top Gun: Maverick,” a sequel to Tom Cruise’s 1986 classic, will take flight on July 2, 2021, nearly six months after its original date of Dec. 23, 2020.
“We truly believe that there is no movie-viewing experience like the one enjoyed in theatres,” said Paramount’s president of domestic distribution Chris Aronson, and president of international theatrical distribution Mark Viane. “We are committed to the theatrical experience and our exhibition partners, and want to stress that we are confident that, when the time comes, audiences everywhere will once again enjoy the singular joy of seeing Paramount films on the big screen.”
Along with Thursday’s announcement, the studio also set “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” a follow-up to this year’s box office smash, to open on April 8, 2022. Other changes to the calendar include a new “Jackass” film (from July 2021 to Sept. 3, 2021), “Under the Boardwalk” (July 22, 2022) and “The Tiger’s Apprentice” (from Feb. 11, 2022, to Feb. 10, 2023).
“A Quiet Place 2” was one of the first major movies pulled from release as cases of coronavirus began to spread in the United States. It was originally scheduled to open on March 20, but the studio moved it to Sept. 4 in the hopes that cinemas across North America would be able to resume operations before then. But uncertainty over when movie theaters — which have been shuttered for almost four months — will be able to reopen has only intensified as the pandemic continues to rapidly escalate across the country. Earlier Thursday, AMC Theatres, the country’s biggest theater chain, pushed back its reopening plans again and said it hopes to turn the lights back on before the end August.
It’s yet another sign that a nationwide return to moviegoing may be further delayed by a worsening public health situation. The film delays come days after Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller “Tenet” and hours after Disney’s “Mulan” were taken off release calendars. While those films had been long positioned to help revive moviegoing, sources say that Paramount did not want “A Quiet Place Part 2” to stay on Labor Day weekend and have the pressure of being the first new movie out of the gate during the pandemic.
The first “A Quiet Place” became a sleeper hit for Paramount when it debuted in 2018, earning $340 million globally. Krasinski returned to direct the sequel, while Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe will reprise their roles from the original. “A Quiet Place Part 2” again sees their family stay silent and evade deadly monsters in a dystopian world.
For “Top Gun: Maverick,” the move was partially due to scheduling conflicts for Cruise. The actor is expected to film the next two “Mission: Impossible” movies when Paramount would need him to promote “Top Gun: Maverick.” By postponing it until the following summer, it frees up Cruise to embark on one of his trademark global promotional campaigns to tout the movie and his death-defying stunts. And getting Cruise back in the cockpit 30 years later didn’t come cheap. “Top Gun: Maverick” cost over $150 million to make, so Paramount is counting on robust ticket sales to turn a profit.