“The Sopranos” prequel film “The Many Saints of Newark” and Will Smith’s biopic “King Richard” have both shifted to 2021 as part of a shuffle of the Warner Bros. release calendar that also resulted in “The Batman,” “Shazam 2!” and “The Flash” all moving dates.
“The Many Saints of Newark” will now open March 12, 2021 from its original September 2020 release, and “King Richard” will move back almost a full year to November 19, 2021.
“The Batman” will now open on October 1, 2021, moving back four months. The untitled Elvis biopic from director Baz Luhrmann and starring Tom Hanks is moving back a month to Nov. 5, 2021. “The Flash” will now open June 3, 2022, a month earlier than planned, and “Shazam 2!” is shifting to Nov. 4, 2022 from an April 2022 release date.
Among some of the other changes, Lisa Joy’s sci-fi and romance “Reminiscence” — starring Rebecca Ferguson, Thandie Newton and Hugh Jackman — will now open on April 16, 2021. And an untitled film based on the life of Black Panther party member Fred Hampton has now been unset from the current release calendar, moved from its original date on August 21, 2020.
Additionally, two untitled Warner Bros. event films have been set for release on June 25, 2021 and April 1, 2022.
Warner Bros. is hardly the first studio to jumble its release calendar for the years ahead, as Sony, Disney, Universal have also all made major moves to their release calendars years down the line.
Earlier in the year, “Wonder Woman 1984” was shifted from its mid-summer release date to now opening in August. One movie however that has yet to move from its release date on the calendar is Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” opening July 17, making it among the first releases once theaters manage to reopen from the coronavirus, whenever that may be.
“The Many Saints of Newark” is helmed by Alan Taylor, a frequent director of “The Sopranos,” based on a script by the series creator David Chase and Lawrence Konner, and it’s set during the Newark riots in the 1960s and also follows the formative years of a young Tony Soprano, played by the late James Gandolfini’s son Michael. Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, Billy Magnussen, Ray Liotta, Corey Stoll, John Magaro, Alessandro Nivola and Leslie Odom Jr. all star.
“King Richard” is about the life of Richard Williams, tennis great and the father to Serena and Venus Williams. Smith stars as Williams in the biopic directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.