After being announced in the late 2010s and then filmed in 2020, the majority of the world still hasn't seen Distant, and many are wondering where they can legally watch the movie.
Starring Anthony Ramos (set to share the screen with one of 17 MCU heroes being brought back in 2025), Naomi Scott, and Zachary Quinto, Distant is an American sci-fi film that follows an asteroid miner as he gets stranded on an alien planet and has to try to save his crew member.
The flick was produced by DreamWorks Pictures and distributed by Universal, but its release has gone through some issues, to say the least.
Where To Legally Watch Distant Online
Distant was filmed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, going through all of the health and safety protocols other productions did at the time.
Universal Pictures originally set a March 11, 2022 release date for the film, but then delayed it to September 16, 2022. However, it was delayed once again, this time being listed for wide release on January 27, 2023.
Unfortunately, Universal removed it from its release schedule entirely before it ever got to theaters.
Amblin Partners, the production company that bought the original script, then scheduled Distant to be released on January 19, 2024, but things fell through and it once again was never distributed.
However, CJ Entertainment did premiere the film in Vietnam on July 12, 2024, which is the only time the full movie has ever been legally shown.
This means that, as of writing, there is no legal way for anyone in the United States or other parts of the world to watch the full movie. No streaming service has streaming rights, meaning that it can't be added to any streaming library.
It is also worth noting that there was no DVD, Blu-ray, or online VOD release for Distant, so it is not available physically or digitally either.
Distant is not the only project fans are interested in that is not available to legally watch anywhere in full, as the Just Beyond Disney+ show suffered a similar fate when it was removed from the streaming platform.
However, there are still legal ways to catch parts of the film online. One of those methods is viewing the official trailer which can be found on YouTube, and another includes watching clips from it on YouTube and/or TikTok.
Another method for taking in the movie is watching longer recap videos that give consumers big chunks of the story.
Specifically, Vietnam's CJ Entertainment YouTube channel posted the main trailer for Distant on the platform. The trailer has Vietnamese subtitles, but the actual audio is still in English, so viewers from English-speaking countries can easily enjoy the trailer.
TikTok user @movies.hub82 posted a 76-second clip from the film featuring Anthony Ramos' character navigating the alien planet he is on. Once again, this clip is in English, the language in which it was filmed.
Another TikTok user, @silvio.raeg, posted a large portion of the film's beginning in multiple parts on the platform.
For example, they have shared clips from Distant in 10 parts so far since November 13, 2024. The last part they posted was on January 6, so fans could regularly refer back to that TikTok page to see if another part gets shared.
It is also worth mentioning that a 12-and-a-half-minute recap video of Distant was shared on YouTube by Movie Recaps.
That video does include some clips from the movie, but no dialogue. Instead, there is narration over the video explaining what is going on. The video is also at least partially AI-generated, though, so there could be some accuracy issues with the true product, but it is still a legal way to consume some of the film.
Unfortunately, recaps like the one above and other clips shared via social media or YouTube are the only legal way to watch Distant as of now. It is possible the full movie could be legally released one day, though, so fans should always hold out hope.
