While Marvel and Disney seem to be pressing ahead with the theatrical only release of Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings, it looks like Sony are preparing follow up the delaying of Venom: Let There Be Carnage with finding an alternative release route for Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. Variety reported from multiple sources that the fourth entry of the kids animated franchise, which was meant to be released on October 1, could be about to have a major upheaval thanks to the rising number of Delta Variant Covid cases running through the US being more contagious and virulent for younger people. With no vaccine currently being rolled out for children, it is becoming apparent that family orientated movies are potentially not going to attract the type of audience numbers they would have hoped.

As if the landscape of movie releases was not rocky enough, the recent announcement that many exhibitors are not going to object to indoor events being subjected to vaccine mandates has caused doubts about the financial projections of family movies due to hit theaters in the next couple of months and beyond.

Sony have already offloaded a number of their more family orientated animations to Netflix this year, including The Mitchells vs The Machines, Wish Dragon and most recently the musical Vivo, which arrived on the platform at the beginning of this month. While there has been no official confirmation around the Hotel Transylvania sequel joining them, it is likely to be where the movie ends up even if there is a sudden downturn in Covid cases int he coming weeks.

It looks like there is no way of predicting exactly how many movies will be available, if a all in the immediate future, as every studio appears to have their own strategy and are even taking it down to a movie by movie decision. Paw Patrol The Movie is being given a dual release by Paramount next week, but their Clifford The Big Red Dog release was last month pulled from its September 17 slot and has yet to be rescheduled, even having been removed from the Toronto Film Festival where it was due to have its gala premiere.

Disney has also released its fair share of movies on Disney+, whether it be the Premier Access route of Black Widow and Jungle Cruise, or free to subscribers like Luca and Soul. While Disney have Ryan Reynolds new movie Free Guy releasing in cinemas only, mainly due to previously agreed contractual agreements according to most sources, and Marvel's next offering of Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings still heading for a theatrical release only for the first 45 days, their next animated features of Ron's Gone Wrong and Encanto are currently slated to arrive in cinemas on October 22 and November 24 respectively, with not word on any potential alternatives being discussed at this time - at least not in public.

With the Hotel Transylvania franchise having already made $1.3 billion worldwide since the first movie in the series arrived in 2012, this is not the way the studio probably wanted the final chapter to go out, but it appears that there is still very much a damage limitation protocol in place and it is likely to continue in some form for the next few months at least.