Most of the world will get to see The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run before the United States. Paramount Animation’s film will hit Netflix tomorrow, November 5, continuing its highly unorthodox rollout.
The streamer will release Sponge on the Run everywhere besides the U.S. and Canada. (Canadians already had a chance to see the film when it opened theatrically last August.) Americans will have to wait until next year, when the film will come out on premium VOD. It will then move exclusively to CBS All Access, Paramount’s sister subscription VOD service, which is due to be rebranded as Paramount+ amid a programming overhaul.
Sponge on the Run is the third feature in the beloved franchise, and the first to feature fully cg versions of Stephen Hillenburg’s characters. At the start of this year, it was scheduled to come out in the U.S. on May 22. After the pandemic hit, the film hopscotched around the theatrical release calendar before being moved to streaming.