After about a year of shifts and shakeups with the theatrical calendar, it’s a bit dizzying to anticipate what’s coming next in movies, whether it be on streaming or in theaters. Not to mention that coming sooner than you may realize is the summer box office season, which is typically prime time to buy movie tickets and grab your popcorn. With that in mind, one major sequel has just moved itself up from June to May. What a nice change of pace!
Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway has just shifted up from its theatrical date on June 11, 2021 to the second week of May, per an announcement from Sony Pictures. The family film was originally going to come out in February 2020, before moving back to the following April. Then the COVID-19 pandemic saw it bunny hop down to August 2020 and was shifted a handful of other times before landing on its (hopefully) final date of May 14.
The movie is a followup to 2018’s animated blockbuster Peter Rabbit, which remixed Beatrix Potter’s classic tale with a live-action/animation hybrid starring James Corden as Peter. The movie centered on the rabbit’s misadventures in a rival garden. In Peter Rabbit, Rose Byrne played the good natured animal lover Bea, who falls in love with the hot-headed Mr. Thomas McGregor, played by Star Wars’ Domhnall Gleeson.
In the upcoming sequel, the couple will be married and living with the rabbit family, and you'll also hear the voices of Birds of Prey’s Margot Robbie and Tenet’s Elizabeth Debicki as Flopsy and Mopsy. But The Runaway will have Peter Rabbit and the gang leaving the confines of their garden for New York City, where chaos apparently ensues.
For the moment, things are looking brighter for the theatrical landscape considering one of two of the biggest markets in the U.S. is opening up for the first time since the pandemic forced theaters across the globe to close. A number of New York City locations are going to be open to the public this weekend, just in time for Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon and Lionsgate’s Chaos Walking.
Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway’s original date would have had the feature opening just a week before fellow family flick Pixar's Luca, along with Jon Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical In The Heights. Its new May date will sandwich it between the long-awaited Marvel project Black Widow and both action comedy Free Guy and horror film Spiral. It does seem to be a more appropriate slot for Peter Rabbit 2, especially as theaters gear up to its first summer season in a year.
For the moment, we’ll be staying cautiously optimistic that Peter Rabbit 2 can get its time to shine in the theatrical market following the 2018 original’s $351 million worldwide haul. Check out what else is set to come out this year with CinemaBlend’s 2021 release calendar.
