Sony just postponed the movie Morbius with Jared Leto from January 28th to April 1st.

Disney cancelled their Pixar movie, Turning Red and it’ll go directly to Disney+ instead.

Are these related to COVID/Omicron or is it something else?

First up, Disney/Sony just had an amazing success with Spider-Man No Way Home.

1.4 billion made so far and will likely gain another 200-300 million.

Highest grossing Spider-Man movie
Highest grossing non Avengers Marvel movie
First billion dollar movie post COVID

Problem though is Disney also had one of their biggest flops in a while the same month with Westside Story.

Steven Spielberg directing it
Large title movie
94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Made only 50 million on a budget of 100 million, which means after ticket splits and marketing costs, it likely lost 100 million for Disney.

Evidence is people under 40 and largely men are happy to go into theaters, but women who are over 40 are avoiding it.

But I think there’s more to both movies being delayed.

Morbius

It is a comic book movie that’s a spin-off to Sony’s Venom movies and has Michael Keaton confirmed to reprise his role of Vulture in Spider-Man.

That movie didn’t have a huge fan excitement for it, but due to fan demands as a result of Andrew Garfield & Spider-Man No Way Home, it seems very likely reshoots are happening in some form.

If they can even get a cameo of Garfield reprising his role as Spider-Man, it’ll boost turnout.

Next, Turning Red

The last Pixar movie to be released on Disney+ was Soul and that was the number one streamed movie of December 2020.

Disney+ fell a little flat the last quarter, hitting 118 million subscribers, when the expectation was 125m.

This could just be Disney wanting to avoid the hassle of marketing and focus 100% on getting a hit on Disney+ to boost value.

This one likely a little more due to COVID, but probably not much.

So are these delays actually a result of COVID?

It’s probably one factor in a pool of many.

The really telling sign would be if Robert Pattinson’s Batman movie gets delayed, seeing how that fits the demographic that made Spider-Man a billion dollar movie.

All said and done, I doubt this is a huge deal.