When will Death on the Nile premiere? It’s a mystery.
The upcoming film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic 1938 whodunit was originally set to hit theaters in October and was later rescheduled to December. Now, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Disney has taken the film off of its release schedule entirely.
No new release date has yet been announced for the Kenneth Branagh–directed film, which features the actor as detective Hercule Poirot. The cast also includes Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot, Black Panther’s Letitia Wright, and Golden Globe winner Annette Bening, among many others. Its most recent trailer appeared in August:
The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have caused theater closures in some major markets, such as New York City and Los Angeles, and box-office numbers are way down elsewhere. This has delayed the releases of a number of other book adaptations in recent weeks. Last month, for example, Warner Bros. postponed the release of Dune, its big-budget film of Frank Herbert’s award-winning SF/fantasy novel, to October of next year; it had been originally slated for a Dec. 18 premiere. Deep Water, a movie version of Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 novel starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, was recently moved to an August 2021 release date.
A few book-based films remain on the theatrical release schedule for this year, however. Let Him Go, based on Larry Watson’s novel, hit theaters today, and Nomadland, an adaptation of Jessica Bruder’s Kirkus-starred nonfiction book starring Frances McDormand, has a Dec. 4 release date. The Tom Hanks-starring film News of the World, based on the Kirkus-starred 2016 historical novel by Paulette Jiles, is currently slated to premiere on Dec. 25.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
