Tom Hanks' WWII movie Greyhound is skipping theaters due to the coronavirus pandemic and will premiere on Apple TV+ instead. As the global health crisis continues, studios have been forced to make dramatic changes to their upcoming release slates. In most cases, they've elected to move the films they originally had scheduled for this spring and summer to a later date, in the hopes theaters will be reopen for business by then. However, a few of them have decided to send those movies straight to streaming instead, beginning with Universal's Trolls World Tour.

Following Trolls World Tour's successful premiere on PVOD, Warner Bros. announced they would be doing the same for Scoob! and sent it directly to streaming on its original theatrical release date last week. Universal has also scheduled The King of Staten Island to debut on PVOD in June and certain box office analysts are predicting August releases The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Bill and Ted Face the Music will similarly end up bypassing theaters. In the meantime, yet another 2020 movie has decided to abandon ship (pardon the wording), rather than risk a theatrical run at a later date.

As of today, Apple has officially acquired Greyhound and plans to premiere it directly on Apple TV+. The film had already changed release dates a couple times prior to the pandemic (first from March 2019 to May 2020, then a month later to June 12), but will now skip theaters entirely after Apple spent a reported $70 million to acquire it from Sony.


Based on the book The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester and directed by Aaron Schneider, the $50 million Greyhound is a passion project for WWII enthusiast Hanks (who both wrote and stars in the film). It's also a pretty big acquisition for Apple TV+, which has struggled to keep up with Disney+ since both streaming services launched in the U.S. last fall. The former hasn't had much luck with films so far either. Their first original movie, The Banker, was initially set to open last December, but was later delayed to March 2020 (due to sexual abuse allegations being raised against one of its producers). Greyhound wasn't projected to be a huge box office hit prior to the pandemic and some even predicted it would go directly to PVOD, but it's still a much higher-profile title than the rest of Apple TV+'s previously-announced slate.

Theaters are tentatively hoping to reopen in time to show Tenet in July, but it's still unclear if that's even going to be possible. More recently, it was reported if Tenet if delayed, it could mean studios will hold off on trying to release any new movies in theaters until December 2020. Given the uncertainty of the situation, it's little wonder Sony decided to go ahead and sell Greyhound to a streamer like Apple TV+ for a guaranteed payout, rather than risking a theatrical run at a later date (be it this year or some point in 2021). No doubt, the latter hopes to use Greyhound to entice more people to finally sign up for Apple TV+ while they're stuck at home, so additional announcements should be coming very soon.