Following the news that the 25th James Bond film, No Time To Die, has been pushed back yet again due to the pandemic, two more blockbusters have also had their release dates postponed.
Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible 7 will now open four months apart in 2022, with the Top Gun sequel premiering on May 27 and the latest Mission Impossible instalment on September 30.
Both films have already experienced setbacks amid the pandemic, with production on Mission Impossible even being temporarily shut down after crew members tested positive for COVID. Paramount has said that it had stopped filming a total of seven times during the pandemic, for reasons including UK government travel restrictions.
Additionally, Jackass Forever has also been affected and has a new release date of February 4, 2022.
The decision to postpone the highly anticipated films was made due to the ongoing issue of the Delta variant of COVID-19 that has continued to see lower cinema attendance and intermittent lockdowns.
While Mission Impossible, Top Gun and Jackass are all Paramount titles, the movie studio is certainly not the only one facing the tough decision to delay tentpole releases.
Over at Sony Pictures, Ghostbusters: Afterlife has also seen its premiere date changed (now opening November 19, 2021) while Venom: Let There Be Carnage will hopefully hit theatres on October 15, instead of September 24.
Paramount has taken a slightly different approach to releasing big titles during the pandemic, opting, for the most part, to keep films off of streaming services unlike Warner Bros. and Disney. There are a few exceptions, however, such as the decision to sell the Chris Pratt led The Tomorrow War to Amazon, and send Mark Wahlberg’s Infinite to Paramount+ exclusively. However, given that Mission Impossible and Top Gun are Tom Cruise pictures — and therefore big box office draws — the decision has been made to keep their releases theatrical only.
Meanwhile, no plans have been made (so far) to push the release dates of other long-awaited titles such as Disney and Marvel’s Eternals, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story or The Matrix 4.
Read more stories from The Latch and subscribe to our email newsletter.