The Complete Guide to Hollywood Movies Opening in July 2020
This is the month that the studios hope things will have gone back to normal. (For our sakes, I hope that’s the case too.) Warner Bros has kept Christopher Nolan’s Tenet rooted to that 16 July date — 17 July in the US — through all the release date shuffling, which shows their hopes and dreams for the post-pandemic future. And also because from The Dark Knight onwards (except Interstellar, which opened in November), most of Christopher Nolan’s films have opened on that particular mid-July weekend and done very well in that mid-summer slot. I guess they don’t want to spoil that winning streak.
Updated on 1 July 2020: In the end, Warner had to move Tenet out of July after all, since the no. of COVID-19 cases started spiking up again and it doesn’t seem likely that the major movie-going cities, Los Angeles and New York, were going to allow their theatres to reopen by July. So of course Mulan had to move too.
On 3 July 2020, the Singapore government announced that local cinemas could reopen on 13 July. Though there aren’t any huge studio titles like Tenet and Mulan, they managed to scrounge up some new titles for moviegoers, including the highly-anticipated sequel to 2016 zombie hit Train to Busan (uncannily apt for our times). Though that isn’t a Hollywood movie, I’m including it in this list because it’s the biggest movie opening in a month that is devoid of exciting titles, seeing that the previous one made US$92 million worldwide, of which almost US$4 million came from Singapore.
Movies coming out in July 2020
(Click on the movie titles in the bullets to jump to that section if you don’t want to scroll through the entire list. You can also click on each movie’s heading to go to their IMDb pages. Release dates below are for Singapore, but if you’re outside Singapore, IMDb can tell you fairly accurately what’s the release date in your country.)
Opening on the week of 16 July
Train to Busan 2: Peninsula (15 Jul)
Director: Yeon Sang-ho (“Train to Busan”)
Cast: Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun
Genre: Action, Horror, Thriller
Synopsis: Jung-seok barely managed to escape from the unprecedented disaster in Korea 4 years ago and lives in exile in Hong Kong by himself. He is given a lucrative chance to return to Korea to retrieve large bags of cash left abandoned in the streets of Seoul. His mission is infiltrated ruined city of Seoul and secure the target truck before the sunrise, then return to Hong Kong unscathed. But he and his team are ambushed by a militia known as Unit 631 and vicious zombie hordes. During his desperate struggle to survive, Jung-seok experiences a moment of deus ex machina as survivor Min-jung and her family save him from brink of death. Together, they formulate one last plan to escape the peninsula for good. The prodigal son, the survivor and the deranged, their bloody battle begins!
Opening on the week of 30 July
Scoob! (30 Jul)
Director: Tony Cervone (“Duck Dodgers” TV series, animation director of “Space Jam”)
Cast: Will Forte, Mark Wahlberg, Jason Isaacs, Gina Rodriguez, Zac Efron, Amanda Seyfried, Kiersey Clemons, Ken Jeong, Tracy Morgan, Simon Cowell, Frank Welker
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family
Synopsis: “SCOOB!” reveals how lifelong friends Scooby and Shaggy first met and how they joined with young detectives Fred, Velma and Daphne to form the famous Mystery Inc. Now, with hundreds of cases solved and adventures shared, Scooby and the gang face their biggest, most challenging mystery ever: a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world. As they race to stop this global “dogpocalypse,” the gang discovers that Scooby has a secret legacy and an epic destiny greater than anyone imagined.
Unhinged (30 Jul)
Director: Derrick Borte (“American Dreamer”, “The Joneses”, “London Town”)
Cast: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson
Genre: Action, Thriller
Synopsis: Academy Award winner Russell Crowe stars in UNHINGED, a timely psychological thriller that explores the fragile balance of a society pushed to the edge, taking something we’ve all experienced- road rage – to an unpredictable and terrifying conclusion. Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is running late to work when she has an altercation at a traffic light with a stranger (Crowe) whose life has left him feeling powerless and invisible. Soon, Rachel finds herself and everyone she loves the target of a man who decides to make one last mark upon the world by teaching her a series of deadly lessons. What follows is a dangerous game of cat and mouse that proves you never know just how close you are to someone who is about to become unhinged.
