Fast & Furious 9, Bond 25, Dune Reboot Gets New Release Dates

The summer of 2020 just got a little more interesting with two of the year’s biggest blockbusters shifting their release dates. Fast and Furious 9 has bumped back their initial April 2020 release date by nearly two months, and James Bond 25 has swept in and filled the gap. Meanwhile, Denis Villeneuve‘s forthcoming Dune remake will try to rake in some serious holiday box office dough with a Thanksgiving 2020 release date.
Instead of April 10, 2020, Fast and Furious 9 will now open May 22, 2020. Bond 25, as it's currently called by insiders, shifts to take up that vacated spot, having been previously slated for February 14, 2020. Meanwhile, Dune, which has been rapidly closing out its main cast, now has a release date too: November 20, 2020.

Fast and Furious 9 release date
Universal Pictures announced Friday that it had decided to push Fast and Furious 9 back a month to May 2020, which will reportedly have Justin Lin (Fast Five) back as director alongside star Jordana Brewster, who plays Mia Toretto, the sister to Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto and the wife of the late Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor. Mia was last seen in Furious 7, which is the highest-grossing film in the franchise. Fast and Furious 9's new release date puts it in the same week as Godzilla vs. Kong — currently filming — which follows 2017's Kong: Skull Island and the upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Before that, we have the first Fast and Furious spin-off — Hobbs and Shaw, featuring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham — out in August 2019. Johnson won't be part of Fast and Furious 9, he has said. There's also a female-centred spin-off in the works.

Bond 25 release date
That brings us to the next James Bond film, and possibly the last one with Daniel Craig in the lead. It has been pushed back two months to April 2020, most likely owing to the hiring of new writer Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum), which was first reported by The Playlist on Saturday, claiming it would be “an overhaul”. Bond 25 could use the two additional months — Burns will spend “at least four weeks”, The Playlist says — and it's not the first time this has happened. When Cary Fukunaga was hired as director last September, it was pushed back a few months as well.

Fast and Furious 9 was moved to accommodate Bond 25, since they have a common distributor — Universal Pictures — which is handling distribution outside the US on the latter and obviously doesn't want the two films to clash with each other at the cinemas. Bond 25 is currently the only film marked for the April 10, 2020 weekend.

Dune movie release date
And that leaves Dune, which has been slotted for November 2020 by Warner Bros., the distribution partner for studio Legendary Pictures. It's also the only film for that particular weekend, for now. The adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 epic sci-fi novel will star Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name), Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Fallout), Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), Stellan Skarsgård (Good Will Hunting), Charlotte Rampling (45 Years), Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Javier Bardem (Skyfall), Josh Brolin (Avengers: Infinity War), and Jason Momoa (Aquaman).

February 18, 2019