If the enticing teaser for The Batman shown as part of the virtual DC FanDome event had you anticipating the arrival of R-Battz next year, we have some bad news. The impact of Dune moving out of its 2020 slot and into 2021 hitting all of Warner Bros.' movies, and the superhero film is now scheduled to land in March 2022.
Dune has taken over The Batman's 1 October 2021 space on the calendar, while other DC films are being affected in turn: The Flash will run from 3 June 2022 to 4 November of that year, while the Shazam! sequel is on the move from that November spot to 2 June 2023.
They're almost the lucky ones in terms of the genre – Black Adam now sits without a date, alongside Minecraft which, by the time it finally does arrive, will likely be long past its pop cultural relevance.
Yet there's slightly better news for the team behind The Matrix 4, which had been placed on 1 April, 2022, but will actually move back in time, now debuting on 22 December, 2021.
These seem unlikely to be the last changes we'll see to movies, and the impact on cinema chains is proving to be devastating.