Big screen movie releases are once again being reshuffled, as Covid-19's delta variant wreaks merry hell across the US. With cases climbing steeply since July, movie studios are aware how dangerous it is to encourage people into confined, stuffy rooms, sat closely together, with minimal ventilation little money they would make releasing just now. So it is that Paramount has delayed Top Gun: Maverick, and following that MS Flight Sim developers Asobo have said the tie-in DLC will also move to 2022.
In a brief post put up just before the weekend, Asobo explained that the movie’s delay to next year’s Memorial Day weekend means their free tie-in expansion will be doing the same.
“Paramount Pictures recently shifted the release date of Top Gun: Maverick to Memorial Day weekend, May 27, 2022. As we have previously announced, the Top Gun: Maverick expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator for Windows 10 PC, Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox Game Pass will be released alongside the movie. We look forward to sharing more information in the future.”
Not a great deal was known about the expansion, beyond its announcement at E3 this year.
Even then it was a sneaky bit at the end of the Xbox Series announcement for the game, showing that it would include the shooty-gun planes Mr Cruise flies in the new film. And maybe some aircraft carriers?
Oh who knows, the whole thing is probably the result of some long lunch between executives at Microsoft and others from Paramount, who all thought it would be terribly good to cross-promote, and then I’m guessing the team at Asobo were told they needed to make it happen.
Top Gun: Maverick had already been delayed twice, from its original intended release date of December 2020, then to July 2021, and then again into November this year. Paramount are clearly not optimistic about the willingness of audiences to cram themselves in to an air-swapping darkened room by the fall, and the movie’s ended up in May 2022. Two years late! All the planes will be so out of date by then! If the very idea of traveling by planes isn’t already anachronistic enough for you.