With Christmas falling on a Friday this year, the holiday weekend offered bountiful opportunities for movie fans to watch new films.
Among theatrical releases, the highest expectations are for Wonder Woman 1984, the sequel to the 2017 blockbuster starring Gal Gadot. Warner Bros. is also making it available for home viewing on HBO Max, the in-house streaming platform of WB’s corporate owners AT&T/WarnerMedia.
Another major weekend release is Universal’s News of the World starring Tom Hanks, whose performance is generating buzz among critics as worthy of an awards nomination.
The biggest streaming-only release is Pixar’s animated comedy Soul, which debuted Christmas Day on Disney+ streaming. Disney had planned on a theatrical release at Thanksgiving for the Pixar original film but announced in October that it would instead re-direct it to Disney+ for a Christmas opening. These three-holiday releases – one theatrical, one streaming, and one hybrid/day-and-date – demonstrate how unusual 2020 has become for the film industry, full of experimentation born from necessity.
See also: 9 new movies to watch over the holidays (Variety)