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Pride and Glory's Delay Explained by Colin Farrell

by Alex Billington
February 7, 2008

I could've been a bit more harsh and called this Pride and Glory's Delayed Caused by New Line Failure, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Pride and Glory is a cop drama in the same vein as We Own the Night that stars Colin Farrell and Edward Norton. While not exactly a huge release, it did look fairly good (watch the trailer) and it does feature some powerful names including Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich on top of Farrell and Norton. New Line Cinema recently pushed the release date from March 14th this year to some unannounced date in 2009. Quite an odd move, but Colin Farrell recently clarified the reason for the delay, and it does involve The Golden Compass' box office failure.

Farrell was recently questioned at the press junket for In Bruges, and Jeffrey Wells from Hollywood Elsewhere was there to enlighten us with exactly what Farrell said.

"There's this rumor going around that [Pride and Glory has been bumped] because it's a mess or it's a really bad film," he began. "I feel the need to kind of speak up, not from my own end but genuinely for Gavin O'Connor because he wrote and directed it. It's just a really really strong piece, but I think New Line lost the bollocks on The Golden Compass...and they literally don't have enough money to market things."

That's quite a big "ouch" for New Line Cinema. That almost confirms my speculation that New Line was very close to going under back in December when The Golden Compass failed, but I knew that CEO Bob Shaye wouldn't let New Line shut down. As for marketing it and why New Line needs more money to do so, Farrell explains and praises the film, but confirms that it isn't anything easy to market.

"Pride is a tricky one to market anyways. It's pretty dark...I've seen it. Gavin did a great job and you know, Jon Voight is brilliant in it, and Ed [Norton] is great in it and a really strong cast of supporting characters...it's a really strong piece."

Pride and Glory is directed by Gavin O'Connor, of 2004's Miracle as well as Tumbleweeds and Comfortably Numb. The script was co-written by both Gavin O'Connor and Joe Carnahan (of Smokin' Aces). You probably won't hear anything about Pride and Glory until at least January of 2009, which is quite a long time to wait. For all we know, Gavin O'Connor could have any number of his other movies released before this makes it to theaters, considering he's got three other upcoming directing credits, including Warrior, Born to Rock, and Dexterity.

This goes to show how big of an impact The Golden Compass' box office failure really did have on New Line Cinema. They were putting everything they had, including every last penny, into the movie and when it underperformed by a lot, it really hit them hard. New Line's other 2008 movies include the recently released Over Her Dead Body, Be Kind Rewind, Semi-Pro, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Sex and the City: The Movie, and Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D. Most of them seem like strong comedies that will sell themselves and that they already know will be big at the box office, which is a good strategy for them to use to recover this year.

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