Back in simpler times, Vin Diesel was adamant that the headline-grabbing Coronavirus wouldn’t impact the release of his comic book adaptation Bloodshot, and he was even happy to go to China to promote it. Of course, things didn’t exactly go to plan as we soon found ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic that’s still ongoing, with the world unrecognizable from how it looked just a few months ago.
Bloodshot did make it into theaters, of course, but it wasn’t there for very long as cinemas all over swiftly closed up shop, and it ended up arriving on VOD just a couple of weeks later. The first installment in the proposed Valiant Cinematic Universe opened in third place at the domestic box office, and could only earn $37 million worldwide before being pulled from cinemas.
With a modest $45 million budget and strong home video sales, Bloodshot might have managed to turn a profit by now, but after having its run cut short after little more than a week back in March, Sony are planning to re-release it on August 20th in an effort to convince audiences to come back to theaters as the industry attempts to return to some semblance of normality.
Of course, the studio will also be hoping that it results in a nice little boost in box office takings, but with Bloodshot having been available for people to watch from the comfort of their own homes for almost five months now, it remains to be seen if there’s much interest at all in even catching it on the big screen at this point. And that’s despite the fact that 2020 has been such a wild ride so far that it still ranks as the tenth highest-grossing movie of the year despite failing to even crack $40 million.