John Wick 2 premieres internationally in one week. But the film hasn’t been classified in Australia, and none of the major cinema chains have a set screening date for it. So what’s happening?
We got in touch with all of Australia’s major cinema chains across the country to ask what was going on, and we were told that “the distributors locally have made no announcement” — so there’s no film for the cinemas to actually book into their schedules.
The Australian arm of film distribution company Entertainment One, which has the rights to release John Wick 2 internationally and is handling promotion for the film, told Gizmodo that there’s “no update yet” on a local screening date.
John Wick 2 is not in Entertainment One’s just-released release schedule for February, either, so we can say for sure that it’s not going to pop up out of nowhere in the next week in line with its US debut — as much as we would love that to be the case.
It also hasn’t been classified by Australia’s Classification Board, and it appears that it hasn’t been submitted for review in the first place; the Board didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. We’re probably in for a longer wait than we’d like to see John Wick 2 in Australian cinemas, if we see it at all.
Australia was the third largest foreign market for box office takings for the original John Wick, pulling in $US2.69 million and contributing a fair chunk of its nearly $US43 million foreign box office. It also proved more popular after its cinematic release in online streaming, too — so it makes sense for the second movie to be released here.
What happened, Entertainment One? We were professionals. Civilised.
To make things better until we know more, here is a picture of a cute dog.