Anyone who was looking forward to a serious Leonardo DiCaprio double feature this Christmas is going to have to change their plans. While both Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained and Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby had been scheduled to open on the historically crowded December 25 holiday, Gatsby has blinked, and Warner Bros. has delayed the period film's release to next summer.
That's probably a good thing for all parties involved, since the competition in that holiday window is looking especially fierce, and the switch leaves more room for the remaining movies to grab an audience and potentially fascinating summer release strategy for Gatsby, which looks like exactly the kind of prestige film that's usually held for fall. As it stands Django now has Christmas Day to itself, with the Seth Rogen-Barbra Streisand comedy The Guilt Trip opening the day before. The week before that, though, sees the Tom Cruise thriller Jack Reacher, Judd Apatow's comedy This is 40 and Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden drama Zero Dark Thirty, which just debuted a new trailer. And just two weeks before that sees the release of both The Hobbit and Les Miserables-- yeah, December is plenty busy as it is.
But as someone who's still fond of Luhrmann's gonzo style, even while being wary of him overdoing an amazing book, I'm a little disappointed we won't get to see the movie for ourselves until next year. Fans of lavish costume dramas won't be too left out though-- there's Tom Hooper's take on the musical Les Miserables, which promises all the high emotions you can hope for, and also Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, which in early glimpses has suggested a theatrical flair that would make Baz Luhrmann proud. We may have to wait a while for his next movie, but his spirit should be part of Oscar season all the same.
