Scorsese's SHUTTER ISLAND Release date Moved to Next Year! No!
OK, so I'm a little pissed off right now. One of my most anticipated movies of the year isn't even going to be released this year anymore! according to deadlinehollywood Paramount Pictures is pushing Shutter Island October release date to February 19th 2010. This is the perfect movie to be released in time for award season! It has got awards written all over it! There has been a lot of buzz building up around this movie, and by the time February rolls around that buzz is going to be gone. The movie has been screened for test audiences and the scores have been around the low 90's. So why are they doing this? There are two reasons:
Paramount told the filmmakers it doesn't have the financing in 2009 to spend the $50 million to $60 million necessary to market a big awards pic like this.
Here is the other reason given, Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't going to be available to promote the pic internationally. So the studio settled on the release date of February 19th because that's when Silence Of The Lambs came out back in 1991 and it won the Oscar.
Now that the Academy has expanded Best Picture to 10 films, it will be easier for a movie that came out in the beginning of the year to get nominated.
They make a good point about the 10 oscar nominations, but still I don't like the fact that they made that move, and I don't think it is going to help the movie in the long run. Whenever a movie release dates gets bumped the first thing people think is that the movie must suck, is Paramount trying to hide it's suckiness? I don't think that's the case but people will think that. Paramount's crazy for doing this. Oh well, there's nothin I can do except complain, and wait even longer to see it.