It’s been revealed that due to the Coronavirus outbreak, Disney is now pausing all stages of production and pre-production for all of their in-development live action projects. The announcement comes not long after it was announced several Disney releases would be postponed from hitting theaters and that even Disneyland would soon be closing down for most of the month. Things just continue to look bleak as this Coronavirus ordeal continues to spread.
As revealed by Deadline, the projects in various production phases that Disney was working on which have since been temporarily shut down due to the Coronavirus included the following titles: Home Alone, The Last Duel, Nightmare Alley and The Little Mermaid remake, as well as Peter Pan & Wendy and Shrunk.
They released the following statement regarding the situation:
“While there have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 on our productions, after considering the current environment and the best interests of our cast and crew, we have made the decision to pause production on some of our live-action films for a short time,” Disney announced. “We will continue to assess the situation and restart as soon as feasible.”
While it isn’t expected that the delays on all of these films will take too long, as stated above it should only be “for a short time,” Disney hasn’t actually released any specific dates. And without any announced dates given for when production is expected to resume on any of the aforementioned projects, it is a very eerie sight to see so many projects currently paused. And it’s very much possible that other film studios could be following Disney’s example, although there’s nothing concrete on that yet. But given the status of the Coronavirus outbreak, there’s no telling what could happen next. Let’s just hope that things in the entertainment industry will go back to normal sooner rather than later given the extreme circumstances surrounding everything.