In just the past day, concerns surrounding coronavirus have drastically changed the entertainment landscape. Basically every wide release movie planned to hit theaters in the next month has been pushed back. Disneyland is closed and Walt Disney World will be closing shortly. Now, the virus is impacting films that are currently in production. Specifically, Marvel's highly anticipated Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The movie has temporarily ceased production as cast and crew wait to find out if the film's director has the virus.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton has, on the advice of a doctor, self isolated himself while filming Shang-Chi in Australia, according to THR. It appears that Cretton decided to get himself tested for the virus, mostly out of caution because he has a newborn baby and wanted to be safe, The results of the rest won't be in until sometime in the coming week, and so the director is going to stay safe by staying away from people until the results of the test come in. The film will wait for him.
If the test comes back negative, then one assumes production will resume and things will go on more or less as normal. If the opposite happens however, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, could be dealing with a lengthy delay. If nothing else, one expects a lot of the rest of the cast and crew that Destin Daniel Cretton came in contact with will need to be tested as well. The dominoes will just continue to fall.
And a significant delay in production could lead to a delay in the film's release, but at this point, that's par for the course. Basically every wide release film that was supposed to hit theaters in the next month has been put on hold. Some have release dates several months, or even a year from now, others are just in limbo with no idea when we might see them. If things don't clear up quickly, then we could see even more movies put on hold, which is going to wreak havoc with the release calendar at some point down the road when every studio is trying to find a place to release the movies.
Shang-Chi isn't the only movie filming in Australia that's on hold. Tom Hanks was down under to film a movie about Elvis that is now playing the waiting game as well as both Hanks and wife Rita Wilson have been diagnosed with the illness.
Even if the coronavirus itself becomes less of an issue in the next few weeks, as we're all hoping it will, clearly, the repercussions of the virus are going to continue being felt for some time to come. As coronavirus continues to impact the entertainment world, and the entertainment world tries to find a way through, keep checking CinemaBlend for more news as things develop.
