GOOD! Gives me time to read the novel...

deadlinehollywooddaily.com:

>SHOCKER! Paramount Moves Scorsese's 'Shutter Island' To February 19, 2010

EXCLUSIVE: This Shutter Island decision is now the second major studio pic to jump from fall 2009 to February 2010 (after Universal's The Wolfman recently moved off November). But Paramount's adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel directed by Marty Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio looked entrenched for October 2nd and this coming awards season.

For godsakes, the pic is already on people's Oscar list. Such a surprise delay is just going to compound all the buzz surrounding the picture and its great trailer released in June. An insider tells me. "It tested in the high 80s/low 90s and Scorsese even brought it down to 2 hours."

So what's the problem? I hear that Paramount told the filmmakers it doesn't have the financing in 2009 to spend the $50M to $60M necessary to market a big awards pic like this. ("Given where the DVD business is in 2009, our only hope is the economy and the retail business rebounds in 2010 because the hardest hit segment has been movies that play to an older adult audince," a studio source tells me.)

So the studio settled on the release date of mid-February because "that's when Silence Of The Lambs came out" back in 1991 and it won the Oscar. "Now that the Academy has Best Picture to 10 films," an insider notes to me, "it will be easier for a movie that came out in the beginning of the year to get nominated for Best Picture."
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"I am a rewriter. I rewrite a number of times. Imaginative richness is born in rewriting." - Bernard Malamud