Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson ’s sci-fi action thriller Mercy is being shown little of the stuff by Amazon MGM Studios, as the film has been given a hefty kick into 2026. Originally scheduled to go up against Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody 2 on August 15, 2025, fans will now have to wait until January 23, 2026, to see the movie arrive in theaters.

Mercy is directed by Timur Bekmambetov, who previously at the helm of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and 2016’s Ben-Hur remake, and follows a detective (played by Pratt) who attempts to clear his name after being accused of a crime he did not commit. Filming on the movie wrapped in May 2024, which should have been more than enough time for post-production work, making it hard to work out why the delay happened.

Obviously, there are plenty of reasons that can be theorized for the delay. January is known as a month where movies that are not expected to perform too well are sent to die. Moving the film from its original prime summer position to the winter graveyard slot does not exactly show a lot of faith in Mercy. Then again, putting the film out in August, trailing behind several big franchise movies, could have been just a foolish idea to start with. Now, Mercy will instead clash with an unannounced Disney movie and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple among others.

There are many paths for new movies to go down now, and which they choose is often the making or breaking of a film. Chris Pratt has found success on both the big and small screen in the action genre, so there is an argument that Mercy may have worked better as a Prime Video exclusive.

Pratt has been making his presence felt on Prime Video in recent years with the action series The Terminal List, and several movies such as the Amazon Original The Tomorrow War. The latter of these was set to have a theatrical release as a Paramount Pictures film, but the Covid pandemic saw distribution rights being picked up by Amazon despite its huge $200 million budget.

Its debut in July 2021 reportedly drew in 2.41 million households according to Samba TV, the largest for an Amazon Original at that time. Furthermore, it became the most watched movie of that summer, and it managed to hold off the likes of Black Widow, Luca, and score a higher total viewership than the entire Fear Street trilogy combined on Netflix.

Action movies are thriving on streaming, whether they are new releases or classics being added to a new streaming platform, so there is little doubt that Mercy will still do well when it hits streaming. The real question is whether it can prove that its theatrical release was warranted, or if it should have aimed to recapture a similar audience as The Tomorrow War as a streaming exclusive.