The release for Tom Cruise’s films Top Gun: Maverick and Mission Impossible 7 has been postponed as the threat from the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to rise. A spokesperson for ViacomCBS informed that Top Gun: Maverick will release in May 2022 and MI7 has been postponed till 30 September 2022, according to a report in Reuters.
Top Gun: Maverick is the sequel to Tom Cruise’s 1986 action film which stars the actor as US Navy pilot Pete Mitchell. The movie also stars Val Kilmer, Miles Teller, and Jennifer Connelly, While it was earlier scheduled to release on 19 November, it has been postponed to 27 May.
Mission Impossible 7 of the Mission: Impossible franchise is directed by Christopher McQuarrie and stars Tom Cruise in a reprisal of his role as special agent Ethan Hunt. The seventh instalment of the franchise also stars Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, and Hayley Atwell.
Theatre operators are relying on big-budget releases this year but the Delta variant became a cause for concern. Among the film’s scheduled to release this year are Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage (15 October), the latest James Bond film No Time to Die (8 October), Marvel’s Eternals (5 November) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (17 December).
One of the largest movie studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, had also announced in 2020 that all the movies in their 2021 slate would release simultaneously on OTT and in theatres. The releases include highly anticipated films like Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix 4: Resurrections and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.
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