When playing in PS4 edition, I never close the application and simply put the console in rest mode, so I rarely ever have to load up Minecraft, so I'm not sure if this problem goes back further. The very first screen that comes up, the red background with the Mojang logo, is where the whole game just stops. I've tried waiting it out, I waited 2 1/2 hours and nothing happened so its not just really slow.

As a side note that may not be important, this was the first time I logged out since the update that gave servers to PS4, and that update (I think, again I cant log in to see) was called 1.16.100 and may have caused the issue.

Also I said that it affects 1.16.40, but I only did because it was the only option and I had to write something.