Rachel Zegler in Disney’s “Snow White.”
Courtesy of Disney
Get ready for the dominoes to begin falling in earnest as studios struggle to rearrange their 2024 theatrical release calendars in light of the ongoing actors’ strike.
Disney announced Friday that it is delaying the release of its live-action film “Snow White,” starring Rachel Zegler, by one year from March 22, 2024 to March 21, 2025. The film, officially titled “Disney’s Snow White,” is among the studio’s biggest offerings of the year and is one of the anchors of its spring slate.
The other spring anchor is Pixar’s animated March tentpole Elio, which is being delayed by more than a year, from March 1, 2024 to June 13, 2025.
In a move unrelated to the strike, Disney and Searchlight Magazine have removed Dreams starring Jonathan Majors from the December 2023 calendar. The decision was widely expected due to the majors’ legal troubles. He is scheduled to stand trial in New York on Nov. 29 on harassment and assault charges. The film premiered at Sundance in January and was considered at the time an awards model for Majors, who plays an aspiring bodybuilder.
The calendar shifts come as the actors’ strike has already lasted over 100 days. Earlier this week, Disney’s Bob Iger and other Hollywood CEOs told SAG-AFTRA that if the two sides can’t reach an agreement, the deadline to decide which films they want to move forward has all but passed. Multiple sources say the deadline is the first week of November, if not November 1st.
Expect more release date changes in the coming days if strike talks fail, particularly with regards to 2024 summer films.
Disney has not commented on the status of Deadpool 3, which Marvel Studios is scheduled to release in theaters in early May this year, but the threequel’s move is all but certain since it was one of numerous Hollywood films in production had to be stopped when the actors’ strike began.
On Monday, Paramount announced that Tom Cruise’s next film “Mission: Impossible” will disappear from the 2024 theatrical calendar. The eighth installment in the action-spy series appears to forego the second half of the previous title, Dead Reckoning, Part Two. A new title is expected to be announced at a later date.