Last year Disney took the plunge and made some big changes to its upcoming movie schedule, pushing back many Marvel movies and Indiana Jones 5 by months to offset the delays faced during the Covid pandemic. Now it looks like Warner Bros. is doing something similar with its 2022/2023 slate after announcing a huge reshuffle that sees Shazam: Fury of the Gods being pulled forward, while all other movies drop back in scheduling starting with the Dwayne Johnson movie Black Adam.
Fans of Shazam will be happy to see that the sequel to the Zachary Levi hit will now be arriving on Dec. 12, 2022, moving up from Summer 2023. It was news that Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution was delighted to share, commenting, “We’re thrilled to bring Shazam! Fury of the Gods to audiences as a Christmas gift this year. Families of all ages will really enjoy it.” The date announcement didn’t come with the same kind of good news for all other movies, including Shazam spin-off Black Adam. Dwayne Johnson announced that his “hierarchy changing” movie will be moving from July to Oct 21, 2022, while Johnson’s other movie DC League of Super-Pets will now move from May 20 to Black Adam’s previous July 29 slot.
While Warner Bros. seems to have been attempting to pull the DCEU back into some kind of order, that seems to be on shaky ground again with both The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom slipping back from their November and December 2022 releases to new dates of June 23rd and March 17th next year. In contrast, there has been no mention of changes to the Batgirl movie, which is set to premiere on HBO Max later this year and features Michael Keaton as Batman, the same as in The Flash.
The full Warner Bros. DC release schedule now looks like this.
DC League of Super-Pets – Jul. 29, 2022
Black Adam – Oct. 21, 2022
Shazam! Fury of the Gods – Dec.12, 2022
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom – Mar. 17, 2023
The Flash – Jun. 23, 2023
Warner Bros. Has Also Delayed Releases For Non-DC Movies Wonka and The Meg 2
Along with the slate of DC movies, two other big Warner Bros. films have been caught up in the shuffle, which seems to revolve around the delays caused during the Covid pandemic and how it has had an enormous impact on the completion of numerous visual effects required in the films.
Timothee Chalamet-led Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel Wonka, which is currently filming in the U.K. has been given a hefty delay from Mar. 17, 2023 to Dec. 15, 2023, and Jason Statham’s second shark movie The Meg 2: The Trench will now be arriving in theaters on Aug 4, 2023.
The effects of the Covid pandemic and the delays it brought to many movie shooting schedules have taken a greater toll than anyone first imagined. With lockdowns, shutdowns from positive testing and travel bans all playing a part, the delays now being applied to Warner Bros. scheduled are very similar to this imposed by Disney on their big movies last year. With these dates now in place and the pandemic seeming to have finally lost its grip on the studio productions around the world, many movie fans will be hoping these are the last substantial delays that we see from now on.