Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Monitor, WIRED’s entertainment news roundup. Today, we have a lot more news about how the new coronavirus is affecting the entertainment industry. There's also a Batmobile. Let's get started.
Earlier this week we reported that James Bond fans had posted an open letter to the companies behind No Time to Die asking them to push back the release date for the film because of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. Yesterday, they did. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the release date for the 25th Bond film, originally scheduled for April 10, will now be November 25 in the US. That makes No Time to Die the first major movie tentpole to change its release plans because of the new coronavirus, but chances are it won’t be the last. Globally, the film industry is looking to lose $5 billion due to closed theaters in places like China, where the virus has taken a massive toll. If delays like this continue, the box office will no doubt continue to suffer.
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Speaking of the coronavirus, it’s also—as we’ve reported here—taking a toll on upcoming conferences. As companies are starting to advise employees against unnecessary travel and pull out of conventions and conferences out of concern for their health, events like the Game Developers Conference, Facebook’s F8 conference, and Google I/O have been postponed. So far, the upcoming South by Southwest conference is still happening, but many companies are opting out of their previously scheduled involvement, including Facebook, Twitter, Vevo, and TikTok. This week, Amazon Studios joined the list. More are surely soon to follow.
In slightly better news, director Matt Reeves is still working on The Batman, his extremely star-studded new film about the Caped Crusader. Plot details are still pretty scarce, but he has been sharing photos of the movie’s costumes and such. To that end, on Wednesday, the director revealed the new Batmobile for his film. Gotta say, it looks pretty cool.
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