In yet another ill omen for the remainder of 2021, Paramount has moved their remaining movies, including Mission: Impossible 7 and Top Gun: Maverick, to 2022. We’ve been here before, and has always been the case with Paramount, they simply will not risk Tom Cruise’s ire by attempting anything less than a robust, theatrically exclusive release of his movies. The date changes move Maverick from November 19 to May 27, 2022 (Memorial Day weekend in the US, befitting for a patriotic movie/unofficial Navy recruitment video), and pushes M:I 7 from Memorial Day weekend to September 30, 2022. Jackass Forever is also moving, from this October to February 4, 2022, and Sony has responded by pushing Ghostbusters: Afterlife back one week, into Maverick’s spot on November 19. This marks the end of Paramount’s 2021 releases and makes Copaganda For KidsPAW Patrol: The Movie their last film of the year.
They will keep moving Cruise’s movies as long as it takes for conditions to improve enough for him to go on a robust world tour, so don’t be shocked if this pair of films moves again. At this point, the financing on these films must look completely insane, as the studio has to pay for every push back, not only in marketing costs that compound with each new advertising cycle, but also as interest piles up on production financing loans meant to be paid off with box office revenue. This is why No Time To Die is pretty well guaranteed to come out in October, it’s reportedly costing MGM a million dollars a month to keep delaying, money that MGM, even in the midst of an Amazon takeover, simply can’t keep burning. I’m imagining the offices of every movie studio look like that part in The Big Short when the various investors who shorted the housing market can’t figure out why their money isn’t rolling in as the market starts to tank, except its studio accountants just watching in misery as their interest accrues. I guess that Paramount can afford to keep bankrolling delayed releases says something good about their finances, though moving more tentpoles out of 2021 doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year in film.
