With only 20% of US theaters remaining open and the rest of the world’s cinemas pretty much closed due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, studios are quickly shuffling release dates of their films that were supposed to come out over the next couple of months. One of the studios that had the most films arriving this spring is Lionsgate, with “Antebellum,” “Run,” and the “Saw” reboot-quel “Spiral.” And it appears that Lionsgate has been forced to pull those films from the release schedule.
In a new social media post, the studio confirmed what many already assumed—three of Lionsgate’s upcoming horror-thrillers were going to need to find new release dates, as they won’t be able to arrive in theaters in April and May of this year. The studio wrote, “With theaters across the country closed, Lionsgate will be postponing the releases of ANTEBELLUM, RUN and SPIRAL. We can’t wait to share these films with the world when this challenging moment is behind us.”
Of the three, the most anticipated is clearly “Spiral.” Starring Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, “Spiral” is Lionsgate’s most recent attempt to revitalize the “Saw” franchise after the recent “Jigsaw” failed to do so a couple of years ago. And when you have a film that is aiming to kickstart a new series of films, you can’t risk anything, so it makes complete sense that Lionsgate is going to pull that movie and figure out a better time to release it.
As for “Run” and “Antebellum,” both look really interesting and have great concepts, but haven’t really begun their marketing campaigns outside of a couple of trailers. That being said, these are films that could easily be slotted sometime later this year in the summer or even fall.
Obviously, announcing new release dates for these three films is a bit premature. We have yet to fully see the long-term effect of coronavirus on the box office and film industry. Until then, there’s no way of knowing when these projects will hit the big screen.