'The Personal History Of David Copperfield' Gets New Release Date As 'The One And Only Ivan' Heads To Disney+
Disney has updated release plans for two of its upcoming titles. The Personal History of David Copperfield will now open in theaters on August 14 while The One and Only Ivan is now headed directly to Disney+ a week later. These are just two more entries in the ever-shifting movie release landscape of 2020, the year that refuses to stop being so extra, as the kids say.
This week, Disney+ is unleashing Artemis Fowl, a movie that was originally set for theaters but ended up going directly to the streaming service. The decision was due to the coronavirus – and also, probably, due to the fact that the movie just isn't very good. Following the news that Disney would be sending one of their upcoming titles directly to streaming, Disney's Bob Iger was asked if other titles might head directly to Disney+, to which Iger replied: "In terms of movies going ahead after Artemis, there may be a few more that we end up putting directly onto Disney+, but for the most part a lot of the big tentpole Disney films."
After that comment from Iger surfaced, I speculated that the film most likely to head to Disney+ next would be The One and Only Ivan, and it turns out I was right. Today, Disney confirmed that The One and Only Ivan would premiere exclusively on Disney+ August 21, 2020. In the movie, "Ivan is a 400-pound silverback gorilla who shares a communal habitat in a suburban shopping mall with Stella the elephant and Bob the dog. He has few memories of the jungle where he was captured, but when a baby elephant named Ruby arrives, it touches something deep within him. Ruby is recently separated from her family in the wild, which causes him to question his life, where he comes from, and where he ultimately wants to be."
The film features the voices of Sam Rockwell as the gorilla Ivan; Angelina Jolie as Stella the elephant; Danny DeVito as Bob the dog; Helen Mirren as Snickers the poodle; Chaka Khan as Henrietta the chicken; Mike White as Frankie the seal; Brooklynn Prince as Ruby the baby elephant; Ron Funches as Murphy the rabbit; Phillipa Soo as Thelma the parrot; and stars Ramon Rodriguez, Ariana Greenblatt, and Bryan Cranston.
In other Disney release news, The Personal History of David Copperfield – which is a Searchlight movie, but remember: Disney owns Searchlight now – is set to hit theaters on August 14. Armando Iannucci's delightful take on the Charles Dickens novel features Dev Patel, Aneurin Barnard, Peter Capaldi, Morfydd Clark, Daisy May Cooper, Rosalind Eleazar, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Gwendoline Christie, and Paul Whitehouse. I caught the film at TIFF last year, and enjoyed it immensely, leading me to write: " The Personal History of David Copperfield is so warm, so inviting, so pure, that it will make your heart sing. We don't deserve a movie as overwhelmingly charming as this, but how lucky we are to have it."