With just two weeks to go until its original premiere date, the Gran Turismo film has been delayed by Sony Pictures as one of many titles the studio is shuffling due to widespread industry strikes.
The movie, inspired by the real-life story of GT Academy winner Jann Mardenborough, was originally scheduled for a worldwide release of August 11 — though some fans have already had early previews. That’s now been shifted back two weeks to August 25.
Gran Turismo isn’t the only Sony project affected, with the studio delaying several other major titles that include its big-budget Sony Spider-man Universe (SSU) entries. Kraven the Hunter has been moved from October back to August 2024, while animated flick Spider-man: Beyond the Spider-Verse has dropped from its March 2024 date entirely.
It appears that Sony Pictures is reacting to the once-in-a-generation labor strikes in Hollywood, as both writers and actors take to the picket lines to protest over pay, residuals from streaming, and the looming threat of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) was the first to walk out, in May 2023, with the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) joining it in a separate but similar dispute in July.
That pretty effectively shuts down any movie or TV series that’s in development or filming. Although productions that have wrapped can continue largely unaffected there’ll be no acting talent available for the usual promotional work, including interviews.
Sony has seemingly acknowledged this directly in its comments about the two-week delay for Gran Turismo, stating that “the stars can’t promote the film, but the audience can”. That suggests it’s pretty confident that audiences are going to love it, which seems to be the case so far.
Certain scheduled previews are still planned to go ahead — which we suspect will include the special screening as part of the Gran Turismo World Series Showdown in Amsterdam on Thursday August 10.
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