Every now and then a major piece of horror news slips through the very impressive net here at The Vault of Horror. Such was the case with this frustrating bit of information, which I only learned a week ago. I'm sure everyone knows by now but me, but for those who don't, late last month Paramount decided to bump the highly anticipated Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island from its October 3 release, all the way back to February 19.This is the second major studio film to be bumped into next year, with the first being Universal's The Wolf Man. What a bummer. The prospect of a Scorsese horror movie is enough to send me into fits of geek giggling, and waiting until October was hard enough. By the way, notice how they're trying to position this as a "psychological thriller", when it's so clearly a horror movie? They don't want to stigmatize the film in the eyes of the Academy, or infer that Marty would deign to sully his hands in our beloved genre. But that's a harangue for another week...
Still, this is such a cool project. Whoever expected to see a horror film directed by Martin Scorsese? According to the original report from Deadline Hollywood, there are a couple of reasons for the postponement. Firstly, Scorsese is apparently unavailable to promote the film at the moment.But the real reason seems to come down to budget, in these trying economic times. Seems that after shelling out buckets of cash to market Star Trek, Transformers and G.I. Joe this summer, Paramount is tightening its belt just a bit. This will move the flick out of prime Oscar season (autumn), but Paramount is rationalizing the move by pointing out that Silence of the Lambs was also released in February. Whatever gets you through the night, boys.
I suppose there could be worse reasons for the movie getting bumped, so I'm not that upset. The film is supposed to be excellent, and Paramount just wants to position it in such way that they can give it the push it deserves. Still, I just want to see the damn thing...