With all that's going on right now in the world, the normal rules for cinema releases no longer apply and the theatrical window has shortened.
The theatrical window, for those that may be unfamiliar with the phrase, refers to the time it takes a movie to come from the cinema to home release. This week, Disney announced that 'Onward', the new Pixar movie with voice roles by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, is heading to home release.
Likewise, Ben Affleck's sports drama 'Finding The Way Back' and the live-action 'Sonic The Hedgehog' movie have all been earmarked for early home release on March 24th and March 31st respectively.
In the case of 'Sonic The Hedgehog', that's a full 46 days before it would have normally arrived on home release. 'Finding The Way Back', meanwhile, was due to be released in cinemas here in Ireland on April 24th and was released in US cinemas on March 6th.
As it stands, the release calendar for movies remains unclear at best. Productions have been shut down as a result and movies like 'Fast and Furious 9' and others have seen their release dates pushed back or written off entirely.
Given the fact that nobody's really sure how long all of this is going to last, there's a question mark over whether the rules regarding theatrical windows will still be enforced for the duration, and whether this will continue when things go back to normal.
