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Summit Releasing Polanski's The Ghost Writer This February

by Alex Billington
January 7, 2010

A very interesting decision from Summit today. Variety has announced that Summit Entertainment will be opening Roman Polanski's new thriller The Ghost Writer (originally titled just The Ghost) starting on February 19th next month. We've been following the developments on Roman Polanski's arrest last year and reported in October that the film was going to get finished with or without him. Variety says Polanski has been finishing up the film while under house arrest in Switzerland. I'm not sure how they plan to launch a complete marketing campaign for a Roman Polanski thriller in six weeks, but I suppose we'll find out soon.

I have a feeling that even Summit is sensing the negativity surrounding Polanski and instead of building up lots of marketing (while we wait for the US to try to bring him over for trial), they're just quickly and quietly putting it out as soon as possible. Considering we haven't seen anything at all from the film besides an early 10-second teaser that was released on the official website last year, Summit has a lot to do try and convince the few Polanski supporters out there to go see this film. I'm looking forward to it because of the cast - Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Hutton, Olivia Williams - but beyond that I'm not sure what to expect.

Summit will release The Ghost Writer limited on February 19th, with expansions starting on March 5th and continuing on March 19th. Don't expect them to play up Polanski though. Will you go see his new film?

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