Cut to last weekend, when Twelve--which, in their defense, is laughably bad-- opened to a brutal $477 per-theater average and savage reviews. A few days later the company received a cease and desist letter after announcing their plans for an animated Terminator film. Now the bad news keeps coming for Hannover House-- Deadline reports that happythankyoumoreplease has severed ties with the distributor, and is negotiating a deal with Anchor Bay Films with an eye toward a theatrical release.
Not to pile on to Hannover in their time of trouble, but the happythankyoumoreplease people are totally justified. There hasn't been the slightest bit of publicity for the film since Sundance, and given how many of the other festival hits have done well this summer-- from the comedic Cyrus to the bleak Winter's Bone-- it would have made perfect sense to have happythankyoumoreplease out in theaters by now. It's not a perfect movie by any stretch, and sometimes feels more like a sitcom than an actual movie, but it's an obvious crowd pleaser that could easily make the distributor some cash with some decent marketing. In addition to Radnor it stars Malin Akerman, Kate Mara and Zoe Kazan, all of them up-and-comers who could presumably bring in audiences.
Anchor Bay doesn't have a particularly stellar track record for bringing films into theaters-- their latest releases Solitary Man and City Island had unremarkable theatrical runs-- but presumably they'll at least plan to put the film out there. Hopefully Hannover can take advantage of the moment to regroup a bit and figure out where to go from here-- and know better than to ever again tangle with a Joel Schumacher indie. That was a mistake they should have seen coming.
