Last week, Sony Pictures delayed its next superhero movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, from September 24 to October 15. At the same time, it was also reported that the studio was considering scrapping the theatrical release of Hotel Transylvania 4, a.k.a. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, is favor of sending it to a streaming service. Now it’s been reported that this will indeed happen, with the last installment of the Hotel Transylvania film series being set up at Amazon.
Word’s come in that Sony Pictures Animation is closing a deal to sell Hotel Transylvania 4 to Amazon for over $100 million. Although the animated franchise has been a huge moneymaker since the first movie was released in 2012, theaters are now having to contend with the spreading delta variant, and children under 12 are still not able to get vaccinated. That’s an especially big problem for a family-friendly cinematic offering. As such, Variety reports that earlier this month, Sony began exploring alternative methods to releasing Hotel Transylvania 4, and like so many movies have done during the pandemic era, it’s now found a new home on streaming.
Originally Hotel Transylvania 4 was supposed to hit theaters on October 1, but now it’s unclear when the movie will premiere on Amazon Prime Video. Sony will reportedly maintain the rights to Transformania’s home entertainment, linear TV and Chinese exhibition. This is the fourth Sony Pictures Animation movie to be exclusively released on a streaming service, although The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Wish Dragon and Vivo were all sent to Netflix instead. However, it won’t be the first Sony movie to go straight to Amazon, as the Camila Cabello-led Cinderella was set up for a Prime Video launch back in May (although it will still play theatrically in China).
Unlike most of the other major film studios, Sony doesn’t have its own streaming service, so it’s arranged deals to set up its movies on other platforms throughout 2020 and 2021. Along with the aforementioned movies, Sony has also sent An American Pickle to HBO Max, Greyhound to Apple TV+, Happiest Season to Hulu and Fatherhood to Netflix. But the studio is still keeping plenty of movies as theatrical releases, including Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Morbius and Uncharted, among others.
As far as Hotel Transylvania 4 is concerned, the movie sees its monstrous characters accidentally being transformed into humans by Professor Van Helsing’s Monsterfication Ray, while the human member of the family, Johnny, is turned into a dragon. The group must race across the world to find a cure before their transformations become permanent. Transformania sees Brian Hull taking over the Dracula role from Adam Sandler and Brad Abrell succeeding Kevin James as Frankenstein, while the returning cast members include Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Jim Gaffigan, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade and Keegan-Michael Key.
While we wait for Hotel Transylvania 4’s new release date, scan through our 2021 release schedule to keep track of the movies still set to come out for the remainder of this year, or get a head start on next year with our 2022 release schedule.
