Movie Release Dates: 'Free Guy' Moves To May, 'Death On The Nile' Floats To September, 'Antlers' Vanishes Entirely

Yesterday, Disney held their huge, exhausting Investors Day presentation, and while they announced plenty of stuff, they didn't cover everything. For instance: three upcoming Disney-adjacent films – Free Guy, with Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh's Death on the Nile, and the horror film Antlers – received no mention. But now we have some updates. Both Free Guy and Death on the Nile have changed their release dates yet again, while Antlers has vanished from the calendar entirely.

Sure, we got a ton of news about Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and other Disney-related stuff yesterday. But what of the lonely world of Fox? Disney owns Fox now (in case you forgot), which means they own upcoming movies Free Guy, Death on the Nile, and Antlers. But since those movies didn't really fit in with the brand synergy the House of Mouse was selling yesterday, they went unremarked upon. Today, though, Disney shuffled their release dates.

First: Free Guy. Directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Reynolds, Free Guy follows a bank teller called Guy who "realizes he is a background character in an open world video game called Free City that will soon go offline." The film was supposed to hit theaters on July 3, 2020, but of course, that didn't happen due to the coronavirus. So Disney moved it to December 11, 2020 – and then pulled it from the release date calendar entirely. Now, it's back, with a new date for 2021 – May 2, 2021, to be precise.

Then there's Death on the Nile. This is Kenneth Branagh's follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express, and once again, Branagh is playing famed detective Hercule Poirot. In the first film, Poirot had to solve a crime on a moving train. Here, a murder happens on a boat. And, like the first film, Branagh is backed-up by a cast of famous faces: Russell Brand, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Letitia Wright, and more. Believe it or not, once upon a time Disney planned on releasing this on December 20, 2019. Then they changed it to October 9, 2020. Then it got pushed two more times: first to October 23, and again to December 18. Then, just like Free Guy, it got pulled from the calendar entirely. There was some speculation that Death on the Nile might go to Disney+, but instead, Disney has now given it a September 7, 2021 release date.

Finally, there's Antlers, the only title in this story I'm actually interested in seeing. So of course, it's the one title that has no new release date at all. Directed by Scott Cooper and produced by Guillermo del Toro, this horror film involves a mysterious creature terrorizing a small town. It was supposed to open on April 17, 2020, then got pushed to February 19, 2021. Now, it's off the calendar entirely. If I had to guess, I would wager that Disney might be considering releasing this one straight to Hulu. Both Free Guy and Death on the Nile are bigger movies with bigger stars, and Disney obviously wants to keep them theatrical. Antlers, however, is a smaller, R-rated horror film, so I wouldn't be surprised if it went to streaming. Or perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part, because I'd sure like to see this thing sooner rather than later.