The ghost of Covid past is returning to haunt the start of 2022. Along with Sony's postponing of Morbius, HBO Max has canceled the planned red carpet premiere for James Gunn's Peacemaker series. Obviously, the series itself will still arrive on the platform on January 13th, but the recent rise in Omicron cases reportedly led to the cancelation of the event, which was due to take place on Saturday in Los Angeles. According to Deadline, the event was effectively canceled prior to the holidays, with Covid cases already starting to increase.

While it seemed for a short while that Hollywood was starting to find its feet again with several big premieres being held toward the end of 2021 and movies once more arriving in cinemas on their planned dates, 2022 has already made it clear that this may not be exactly true. The first signs of a return to postponements and plan changes came at the Spider-Man: No Way Home premiere, when a surprise appearance by Tom Holland was canceled due to the increased volume of Covid cases and caution being shown by Disney. Similarly, a red carpet event that was planned to happen today for The Book of Boba Fett was also pulled by the House of Mouse, with a statement that read, "Out of an abundance of caution, we will be postponing the Boba Fett fan event. It will be relocated to February 8th in celebration of the finale."

Yesterday, Sony announced that the arrival of Morbius was being moved from January 28th to the April 1st, with the studio seemingly not certain that a large enough number of people would be willing to turn out for their latest new Marvel movie, which would have the double challenge of going up against the still dominant Spider-Man: No Way Home and drawing people out for a relatively unknown character. It seems that was a gamble that Sony was just not willing to take with one of their Spider-Man Universe offerings.

When it comes to the John Cena-led Peacemaker series, the pandemic would have to go a long way to impact the actual release, but the cancellation of a big event for one of HBO Max's most anticipated new shows is another sign that Covid is still a big issue for Hollywood and is not about to just disappear now we have entered a new year. How many more cancellations will be seen as a result of new cases, new strains and growing concerns is something we can only wait to find out.

In the meantime, Peacemaker will make its small screen debut as planned next Thursday, and James Gunn recently revealed that the series will go one step further than Marvel's TV output by having a post-credit scene after every episode, which he said is a "way to give you guys a little something special for watching the credits of our hardworking crew." What precisely these post-credit scenes consist of is something that viewers will have to tune in to find out, but with James Gunn being unable to do much wrong in the superhero genre right now, it is more or less guaranteed to be something that fans will lap up. Check out the latest red band trailer below.