Shutter Island pushed back to February

All weekend friends were texting me left and right saying "Shutter Island is getting pushed back?! wtf?!" Naturally I asked, "Really? Why?" and no one seemed to be able to give me a straight answer. Well, it seems like there really isn't a straight answer yet, just a bunch of conjecture from budgetary reasons to a crowded fall slate. No one seems to have a handle on this yet.

Presumably the logic behind moving it out of the fall season is so that it doesn't get lost among this years Oscar bait like Up in the Air, Jason Reitman's (Juno) latest film starring George Clooney, which is getting early awards buzz. Opening on Shutter's previous release date was also Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man which is sure to grab a lot of the box office as well as grab the attention of the awards.

Momentarily, it's entirely possible that Paramount doesn't have the fundage to keep promoting Shutter Island through September, which could easily have been counteracted by NOT having the trailer for the October release playing behind every damn movie from now back through May, maybe even April. No one needs to see the same trailer every single time they go to the theater or turn on their TV for 6 months. Shutter Island has two big pulls, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorcese, and that's all it needs. Take the month before it's release and market it as hard as they have been marketing for the past 4 months and get the word out closer to the release. I've always thought that seeing trailers sometimes a year before a film's release was ridiculous and now it maybe is what got them into a spot of trouble.

In either case Shutter Island won't be in theaters until February 19th, which follows one week behind Universal's long delayed The Wolfman, which is bound to still be the horror movie of choice even in its second weekend since people getting their Valentine's dates out of the way early will probably sap some of its first week momentum.

More on this to come as the information becomes available, but for now, The Hollywood Reporter has a really wordy and confusing article you can read if you want.