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Paramount Delays The Soloist and Defiance Until 2009

by Alex Billington
October 17, 2008

This just seems to be the year where big release are delayed last minute for odd reasons. First it was Harry Potter, then it was The Road, now it's The Soloist and Defiance, too! The Soloist has been pushed from its initial Thanksgiving opening on November 21st all the way to March 13th next year. Defiance has been pushed from its initial limited opening on December 12th to December 31st, in order to give it Oscar consideration, before eventually expanding wider on January 16th. Both of these films had a considerable amount of early buzz, with The Soloist being the strongest given Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx were playing two emotional leads. Now both films are doomed to fail - at least in my opinion.

Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood tries to uncover reasons why Paramount made this decision to shift two major films. It seems that because Paramount recently lost DreamWorks and subsequently announced that they'll only release 20 major films every year, they've started shifting releases around so that they "don't have a giant hole next year." Other speculation is that Paramount wants to focus its Oscar efforts on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road instead, "but it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the metrics of managing its numbers." Whatever the reasons may be, I think Paramount has seriously hurt the potential box office performance of both films.

Thanksgiving is always a big time to release major films, and I think The Soloist (watch the trailer) looked like it could draw big crowds. Now it won't even have Oscar consideration and is being dumped one week after Watchmen is going to take the world by storm. To me, that's a death sentence for what looked like a great movie. Defiance (watch the trailer), on the other hand, wasn't a film that I thought would do gangbusters at the box office, but they're putting it in the Children of Men slot, with a minimal limited released before opening it wide at the very start of Sundance. It seems like Paramount is doing nothing more than dumping two films that I thought were some of their strongest features left this year.

Filed under Movie News, Opinions

From around the web:

Itri

What the hell is this shit? I think I'm gonna puke, damn you Paramount!
-peter-

I'm REALLY upset by this news. I was SO looking forward to the Soloist, and it was hard enough waiting as it was. Ugh
Jack

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THOSE COCKSUCKERS AT PARAMOUNT DOING????????!!!!!!!! These films would have been just fine for the Oscar race at their orignal dates. Well, I guess I should expect this kind of stupidity from Paramount, what with them releasing "Indiana Jones 4" which was easily the most disappointing film of the year. Seriously, I don't give a flying baker's fuck if it did make 700 million at the box office. The Dark Knight beat that by 200 million and we all can agree it was a far better film. Anyway, DEFIANCE being delayed is what really pisses me off. It looks so great and with QUANTUM OF SOLACE coming out just before, Daniel Craig would have owned Thanksgiving and Christmas. Well once again, thank you Paramount, you money grubbing, uncreative, lipdick FUCKS!!!!!!!
Sally

OMFG!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS! Come on these are major Oscar contenders, whatthefuck are those selfish guys doing! They have a GREAT chance this year, i mean great. I'm pretty sure Downey and Foxx would have a good run at Best Supporting Actor, but come next year, it'll be harder. GOD this is soooo freakin irrational, i just cant wrap my mind around this one. I was really lookin forward to it. And i think it would have done very well at the box office, this will only make everything worse, i bet.
bill

Defiance didn't seem like oscar material to me, so I'm not really sure why they would delay that film.
Zach D.

I wouldn't worry about Defiance. There Will Be Blood dropped in January this last year and did fine during awards season.
http://movieguyreviews4u.blogspot.com Ryan

I won't worry about THE SOLOIST, it is still thetype of film that can effectively combat WATCHMEN like MAMMA MIA! did to THE DARK KNIGHT. DEFIANCE I also think will do OK, but would have doen better with its original release date. I think VALKRYIE coming first now will work to its disadvantage,
http://immoralmatriarch.com Maria

Paramount is doing horribly, but I don't think that these films will suffer too much. The Soloist is a completely different genre and will attract a very different audience than Watchmen, so I don't think Watchmen will impact it's revenue. It's press maybe, yes. And Defiance, if it's as good as it looks, should be fine come award season, and although I'm super excited about, no one I know has even heard of it, so it wasn't really suppsed to garner a lot of dollars at the box office.
tzarinna

Sum bitch. I just saw Craig on Leno last night, I was getting already for some Daniel Craig overload with two movies to salivate all over, bugger. Why must they ruin everything?