Well, that’s a shame. Less than two weeks after the latest trailer for George Clooney’s The Monuments Men debuted, news broke earlier today that the film has been pushed to a 2014 release date. Apparently, there isn’t enough time in the post-production window to have the film ready for its original December release date, prompting Clooney and producer Grant Heslov to delay the film by a few months.
In a statement to Deadline, Clooney said the following:
“The straight up facts are these. We had a really good test last week, scoring in the mid 80s, in Arizona. And when we were on the plane coming back with Jeff Blake, Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton, they said look, let’s be honest. There are lots better times to bring this movie out than December 18. How about November 22? Can you do it? Now, today is our first day at the scoring stages at Abbey Road. Then they call and ask, how about the 15th of November? We like to pull stuff off, and we said, let’s see what we can do. That was two days ago.
We had a meeting with all the effects guys for our CGI stuff, and, we’re just not going to get there in time. Then we looked at the date we had, December 18. I don’t know how many movies are opening, but it’s got to be the toughest December in recent memory for box office. We said, where’s another good place to land? And we looked at February and the Shutter Island slot.
Last night we had a nice meeting and said, let’s be honest. We’re not going to get our effects done in time. As hard as we’re working, the truth of the matter is, we only started principal photography on this in March. So the idea we’d have all the effects ready was a stretch anyway. And we didn’t make it. It’s that simple. It’s certainly not about tone of the film, because it’s testing through the roof. We said, let’s just find a spot where the movie can find an actual audience instead of fighting with 22 other films in December.”
The Monuments Men is now eyeing a release sometime in the first quarter of 2014.
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