Wonder Woman Movie Release Date Moved Forward, Andy Serkis' Jungle Book Pushed Out a Year

Warner Bros. is shifting the release dates of some of its major upcoming movies. The film company announced this week that Wonder Woman will now open on June 2, 2017, three weeks ahead of its previous June 23 premiere date. The other big piece of news was that Jungle Book, which was previously expected to open in October 2017, is now coming on October 19, 2018, a full-year delay. Deadline has all the details.

Wonder Woman, which will star Batman v Superman's Gal Gadot as the main character, was previously going to open on the same date as the fifth Transformers movie, according to Deadline.

It's not entirely alone at its new June 2, 2017 release date, however, as it's still going up against two movies with a potentially broad appeal: Bad Boys 3 and Captain Underpants. The first image from Wonder Woman was recently released, showing off the Amazons.

As for the Jungle Book delay, its move to 2018 further spaces it out from Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book, which comes to theaters on April 15.

Director Andy Serkis said on Facebook that he's "absolutely thrilled" with the Warner Bros. decision to move the release date of the film, which is called Jungle Book: Origins.

"The ambition for this project is huge. What we are attempting is an unprecedented level of psychological and emotional nuance in morphing the phenomenal performances of our cast into the facial expressions of our animals," Serkis said. "We are breaking new ground with realistic non-humanoid animal faces, such as a panther or wolf, ensuring that they convincingly communicate with human language and emotion via performance capture, and are able to stand up to real scrutiny in richly complex dramatic scenes.

"So, every minute more that we have to evolve the technological pipeline will make all the difference...the evidence is there already and it's off the chain exciting, so hang on in there...This is truly next generation storytelling, and it will be the real deal!"

Finally, Warner Bros. teased that it has an "Untitled WB Event Film" to take the place of the original Jungle Book premiere date on October 6, 2017. Meanwhile, two "Untitled DC Films" will come out on October 5, 2017 and November 1, 2019, though no further specifics were provided.