It was announced today by Dwayne Johnson on Instagram that his big Disney film Jungle Cruise will be heading to Disney+’s Premier Access and theaters on July 30. This comes after they announced a hybrid release for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow on July 9, that film had originally planned to be released in May 2020 before the pandemic kept delaying it’s theatrical release.
Jungle Cruise is hoping to be the next Pirates of The Caribbean, becoming a franchise based on a Disney theme park ride but we’ll have to see if they’ll able to be successful on a global level with this hybrid model. This move will likely lead to more hybrid summer releases as while vaccinations are increasing in the United States, the domestic box office won’t fully recovery until herd immunity is reached. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaxxer narratives might make that difficult to happen by July, despite President Biden’s July 4 goal. Variants of the COVID-19 virus could also cause further headaches to the industry.
While Godzilla Vs. Kong’s box office success had shown audiences would be willing to come out to theaters for an event film, studios are still being cautious and offering home viewing options.
JUNGLE CRUISE – Inspired by the famous Disneyland theme park ride, Disney’s JUNGLE CRUISE is an adventure-filled, Amazon-jungle expedition starring Dwayne Johnson as the charismatic riverboat captain and Emily Blunt as a determined explorer on a research mission. Also starring in the film are Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, with Jesse Plemons, and Paul Giamatti. Jaume Collet-Serra is the director and John Davis, John Fox, Dwayne Johnson, Hiram Garcia, Dany Garcia and Beau Flynn are the producers, with Doug Merrifield serving as executive producer.
SOURCE: DWAYNE JOHNSON
THE RONIN 