Top Gun: Maverick Delayed again (as will other Paramount Pictures...into 2022)

[Steve Guttag]

https://ew.com/movies/top-gun-maveri...d-delta-surge/

Top Gun: Maverick becomes first tentpole to eject from 2021 amid Delta surge


Paramount's Mission: Impossible 7 is also on the move due to COVID concerns.

By Derek Lawrence
September 01, 2021 at 03:22 PM EDT

Top Gun: Maverick is hoping to escape the danger zone.

The long-awaited follow-up to Tom Cruise's 1986 flyboy classic is pulling out of its Nov. 19, 2021, release date and landing on May 27, 2022. The move causes a Cruise ripple effect, with fellow Paramount tentpole Mission: Impossible 7 now headed for Sept. 30, 2022, having previously held the May 27 slot. (Also exiting 2021 is Jackass Forever, which will open Feb. 4, 2022).

This is the fourth delay for Top Gun: Maverick since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but more urgently, it's the first major movie to bail on a fall 2021 release amid the Delta variant surge. It's likely that many studios will be closely monitoring this weekend's turnout for Disney and Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. While some big upcoming releases, like Warner Bros'. Dune and The Matrix: Resurrections, are covered with a simultaneous streaming release, movies like Disney and Marvel's Eternals and Sony and Marvel's Spider-Man: No Way Home have all their eggs in the box office basket.


Tom Cruise in 'Top Gun: Maverick'

| CREDIT: SCOTT GARFIELD/PARAMOUNT

Meanwhile, Cruise is now lined up for a monster 2022, should these changes hold and more moviegoers feel comfortable returning to the multiplex. By the time Maverick and M:I7 are released, it will have been four years since his last film, Mission: Impossible — Fallout. Cruise hasn't been the box office draw that he once was, but his long-running spy franchise has become a worldwide success that he can keep returning to, knowing both that fans will show up and he'll get the chance to risk his life. And we're not just talking about when he went to see Tenet.

[Frank Cox]

Well, that's just dandy. I'll have to take the posters for Top Gun and Jackass down again.

By the time they release the big movies, I wonder if there will be any theatres left to play them in.

Hopefully we don't run out of movies again like we did for several months last year. I tried playing some of the "classics" (Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark and whatnot) and didn't get much of a turnout, so even though some theatres somehow manage to get a decent crowd for older movies mine is unfortunately not one of them.

[Mike Blakesley]

Kind of surprising considering all the hoopla they gave the movie at CinemaCon.

I haven't ever taken the poster for it down, I had just moved it into a less "prime" location. So.... back in that corner it will go.

A silver lining is, we will now be able to open "Ghostbusters Afterlife" which I always thought was too close to the Top Gun date anyway. Now they have moved it into that actual date.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Well, with this Smalltown USA, Stranger Things meets Ghostbusters vibe, this "Ghostbusters Afterlife" thing might just work, both as a movie and as a people magnet...

[William Kucharski]

Countdown to No Time to Die being pushed into 2022 in 3, 2, …

[Frank Cox]

It's not just movie theatres.

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsof...d-to-may-2022/

Recently, developer Asobo Studio revealed that Microsoft Flight Simulator was getting a Top Gun: Maverick expansion. Top Gun: Maverick is an upcoming film from Paramount Pictures that takes place more than thirty years after the original. The expansion was expected to launch in 2021, to coincide with the film, but both have been hit with a delay.

Top Gun: Maverick will now launch in May 2022, and so will the expansion. Asobo Studio always planned to release the expansion with the film. The team issued the following statement on the game's website a few hours ago.

Paramount Pictures recently shifted the release date of Top Gun: Maverick to Memorial Day weekend, May 27, 2022. As we have previously announced, the Top Gun: Maverick expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator for Windows 10 PC, Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox Game Pass will be released alongside the movie. We look forward to sharing more information in the future.

The film and the expansion have been hit with a severe delay, but hopefully, this will translate to an even better expansion and movie when May 27 comes around next year. You can play Microsoft Flight Simulator through Xbox Game Pass on Xbox Series X|S and PC, or buy it on the Microsoft Store, starting at $59.99.

[Jon Dent]

"Top Gun: Maverick", the "Duke Nukem Forever" of movies...

[Frank Cox]

On his way out the door tonight, one of my customers asked when Top Gun will be playing. I told him sometime next year.

He said, "Sheesh, by the time they release that movie those jets are gonna be obsolete!"

[Jon Dent]

On his way out the door tonight, one of my customers asked when Top Gun will be playing. I told him sometime next year.

He said, "Sheesh, by the time they release that movie those jets are gonna be obsolete!"

Or you'll see a placard at the end that says "Dedicated to Tom Cruise's memory"

[Sean Falk]

Countdown to No Time to Die being pushed into 2022 in 3, 2, …

I was saying this a month ago, but being two weeks away I think they might actually release it!

[William Kucharski]

I was saying this a month ago, but being two weeks away I think they might actually release it!

Yep, looks like it's going to happen.

Now the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if they have internal tracking showing it won't do well, which would allow them to blame continuing COVID difficulties rather than the film itself.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm really hoping No Time To Die turns out to be a really good movie. But after so much waiting and delays it will be difficult for the movie to live up to expectations. I wonder if the production took advantage of all the delays to fine tune various elements of the movie. Normally technical things, such as the sound mix, happen in a very rushed manner with an almost impossible deadline breathing down the necks of crew members. In this case time isn't an excuse. It does still cost money to spend more time fine tuning the post production elements of a movie project. Obviously re-shoots of scenes or shooting new scenes costs a lot more money.

[Leo Enticknap]

Now the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if they have internal tracking showing it won't do well, which would allow them to blame continuing COVID difficulties rather than the film itself.

It could be that the COVID difficulties are why their internal tracking suggests that it won't do well. Many if not most theaters in the USA and Europe are operating at legally mandated reduced seating capacity, and those in two English-speaking territories (much of Australia and all of New Zealand) are still totally closed. The producers of NTTD are, if I understand correctly, insisting on a traditional, exclusive theatrical release window, meaning that the studio cannot hedge its bets and release it to streaming simultaneously, or almost simultaneously. So they don't want to go ahead with the release until they are sure as they ever can be that the theaters in the movie's main markets are open at full capacity, and that the risk of another scariant leading to lockdowns and business restrictions is in the rear view mirror.

[William Kucharski]

The point is they aren't delaying the release of NTTD, it's releasing to theaters next week.

While that's great for theaters that are open, if it doesn't do well it allows them to blame COVID rather than the film itself, which the conspiracy theorist in me says is why they are moving ahead rather than delaying it again as studios are doing with other tentpoles like Top Gun: Maverick.

[William Kucharski]

"Top Gun: Maverick", the "Duke Nukem Forever" of movies...

Kind of an ongoing race between it and the new Ghostbusters film.