Those of you are probably asking, what the heck is Amusement Park?
For those who are not in the know, Amusement Park is an upcoming animated film about what appears to be an abandoned amusement park located in some kind of enchanted forest. Distributed by Paramount Pictures and produced by Nickelodeon Movies & Ilion Animation Studios(Planet 51, remember that?), the film is set to star Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Garner, Jeffrey Tambor, Kenan Thompson, Ken Jeong, Mila Kunis and John Oliver. The current plan is to release it to the public on March 15, 2019, with a Nickelodeon television series set to debut later on in the year.
However, just recently, the film's director - Dylan Brown - was fired by Paramount due to sexual advances towards women. Of course, this is nothing new in our current times. Celebrities left and right are being accused of sexual misconduct, even those who work in animation! Some notable examples include The Loud House creator Chris Savino and Pixar CCO John Lasseter. When the news came out, I began to ponder about something...
If you remember back in November 2017, I did a piece talking about why I think Illumination Entertainment pushed their Secret Life of Pets sequel back a year. I had said that they probably did it because they low-key knew about Max's voice actor, Louis C.K., and all of the sexual allegations against him. Later on - and by that, I mean the last blog post I did - I chalked it up to them just wanting to hype it up to the general public who normally wouldn't follow film slates and such.
In that article, I had also mentioned that Paramount was simply trying to hype up Amusement Park when moving it away from the March 2019 release window.
Context: Paramount originally had this movie slated for March 22, 2019. The film was then bumped up to July 13, 2018. It was then moved to August 10, 2018, to avoid competition with Sony Pictures Animation's Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. Many months later, Paramount moved the film back to March 15, 2019, a week before its original release date.
At this point, I'm beginning to think that Paramount actually somewhat knew about what Dylan Brown had done to these women back in August 2017 when they decided to move Amusement Park back to March 2019. I'll bet they had only waited until now to reveal that Brown was fired.
I mean, think about it! Why else would they move it up to Summer 2018 before putting it back where it used to be? They're probably using that extra time to find a new director! Plus, who had that July 13, 2018 slot first? The Secret Life of Pets 2. Paramount moved Amusement Park to that date immediately after Universal moved their talking animals sequel back to 2019.
Of course, this is all just speculation on my part. If Paramount only found out about these allegations now, and are planning to delay the movie again, then I think it'll go to May 15, 2020. That date is currently being used for an untitled Paramount Animation movie.
Consider this for a moment. Whenever Paramount stakes out dates for untitled Paramount Animation movies, they always place in something that had a release date beforehand. 3/22/2019 went off the calendar since Amusement Park moved to the week before(I know, I know, not the same date, but still the same month!), and 7/31/2020 is now occupied by former 2019 release SpongeBob SquarePants 3.
If anything, I can see this happening:
03/23/2018-Sherlock Gnomes
02/07/2020-The Loud House Movie
05/15/2020-Amusement Park
07/31/2020-SpongeBob SquarePants 3
03/19/2021-Luck
I think 2019 will be a Paramount Animation-less year much like 2016. No worries, for they still have the Nickelodeon Movies-branded Are You Afraid of the Dark? reboot slated for October 11, 2019. Maybe they'll add something else Nick-related to that year. Current candidates, I think, are the Henry Danger movie and the Michael Bay-produced Dora the Explorer live-action feature(I'm not kidding!), the latter of which is actually aiming for a unspecified 2019 release.
My two cents? I think Paramount will push for the Henry Danger movie to come out first, since the show that it's based off of stars child actors and they probably want to belt the movie out before the likes of Jace Norman and such get any older. Dora the Explorer can wait until 2020, when the franchise turns twenty years old(do you feel old yet?). That'll make for FOUR Nickelodeon Movies productions that year if my predictions come true, what with Loud House, Amusement Park, and SpongeBob 3 accompanying the Hispanic adventurer.
Enough rambling about release dates, what say you on this development?
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