It's a good thing that James McTeigue's The Raven is no longer going up against Andrew Stanton's John Carter on March 9th, because if marketing were equitable to box office, the Edgar Allan Poe story would be buried in the dust. In the past year, while we've seen a poster, a trailer and a few images from The Raven, we have gotten multiple posters, behind the scenes photos, stills, trailers and even concept art for John Carter. It's hard to say what the precise motivation behind the release date change is, but those looking forward to the new John Cusack film are going to have to wait a bit longer.
Coming Soon has learned from Relativity Media that The Raven has been pushed back from March 9th to April 27th. Rather than going up against Carter, the movie will now play against the new Nicholas Stoller comedy The Five Year Engagement and the new Jason Statham actioner Safe (as well as Headhunters and Sound of My Voice, which will be given a limited release that weekend. The McTeigue film stars Cusack as the famous author, who must help the police track down a killer that has been using Poe's stories as inspiration for his murders. The film co-stars Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen.
To avoid competition from their own film, Relativity has also moved House at the End of the Street, a new thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Shue. While that movie was originally going to be released on April 20th, the studio has shoved it all the way to September 21st where it will face off with Dredd and Hotel Transylvania. Directed by Mark Tonderai, the film is about a mother and daughter who move to a new house and learn that the house next door was home to a brutal murder. The daughter begins a friendship with the surviving son of the ordeal and learns that the story isn't what it seems.
Release date changes are made for a number of reasons, from fear of competition to hiding a poor product. I guess we'll have to wait until April 27th and September 21st to find out the story behind these two swaps.
