A rather surprising piece of news has surfaced about the upcoming Seth Rogen comic book movie, The Green Hornet – It has been pushed back a whopping 5 months, from its previous July 7th summer release date next year to December 17th. There’s been no official reason given for the move, but its star Rogen has responded himself to the news.
It has certainly been a rocky road for The Green Hornet, with one notable obstacle being Stephen Chow sadly dropping out, first as director, then as an actor in the role of the titular character’s sidekick, Kato. But with an extremely talented director coming on board in the form of Michel Gondry, and recently Nicolas Cage, Cameron Diaz and Jay Chou being cast (Edward James Olmos has also been rumored), it looked like things were firmly on the road for the release next summer.
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However, as HitFix notes, principle photography hasn’t even started yet, and I don’t think with a project like The Green Hornet that anyone involved wants it to be rushed. Also, the highly anticipated (arguably even more than this movie) Predators would have made for heavy competition as it’s also scheduled to open on July 7th next year. On top of that, a December release sets The Green Hornet apart from all the other summer movies that it will compete with. The more I think about it, the more the move makes a lot of sense.
HitFix managed to get in contact with Rogen, who has given his rather positive thoughts on the date move of The Green Hornet:
“We’re both [me and Michel Gondry are] relieved and psyched about the change. It gives more time for post [-production], which would have been immensely rushed if we were to come out in the summer. It also affords us more time to promote the film, (now we can go to Comic-Con with more than a car!) and ultimately is a great vote of confidence from the studio.”
What Rogen has responded to the news with makes total sense to me, and is in line with why I think the studio has went ahead with the move. With the troubled road that The Green Hornet has had up until this point, we don’t want a rushed production to derail it now that it’s finally on-track. Five months does seem like a bit of a long time, but I’m still fine with it. July is still 11 months away, so a delay from that isn’t that big of a deal when we’re this far away. It’s not a Harry Potter case where the original release date was only a few months away and THEN they suddenly decided to move it to the following year. Excitement and anticipation for The Green Hornet hasn’t really started to properly gear up yet.
Will a comic book movie like The Green Hornet do better with a pre-Christmas holiday release than it would have smack in the middle of summer? I’m not so sure. But I also don’t think that there will be THAT much of a difference at the box office – if the interest from the general movie going public is there for this rather strange sounding comic book movie, it will still be there in December as it was during the summer.
Am I disappointed that we won’t get to see the movie next summer as was planned? Sure, a little bit, but it’s not a project I’ve got on my top 5 most anticipated at the moment. And since the move makes a lot of sense to me, I’m not all that irked by it. You may feel different, I’m sure.
What do you think about The Green Hornet being delayed for a whole five months? Do you think it makes sense or should they have just kept the original summer release date?
As stated, The Green Hornet has now been moved from July 7th, 2010, to December 17th later that same year.
Sources: BoxOfficeMojo, HitFix and Coming Soon
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13 Comments
Well ,it worked for Star Trek.
@Gary,
Yes, but a couple of points:
1) Star Trek was originally coming out in December and they moved it to the summer the next year, The Green Hornet date move is pretty much the exact opposite of that.
2) Star Trek is a MUCH higher profile project than The Green Hornet is. Bigger budget, more of a widely appealing film, not to mention it had all that Trek history to build off of. Everyone knows what Star Trek is, not everyone is familiar with The Green Hornet.
Hopefully they’ll delay it to the 12Th of never. I’m very skeptical that Rogen can pull off or do justice to “The Green Hornet.”
However ask me if I would rather go see “The Smurfs,” “Yogi Bear,” or “The Green Hornet” and unless “GH” is one star or less it’s going to get my money. Smart move to take on them, than go up against “Predators.” Even if the quality was incomparable.
I bet the first photos of Rogen as Hornet are going to hilarious.
(In a bad way for the fans of Green Hornet),,,
Ross,
I guarantee you if you asked the general person on the street a year before Iron Man came about the character,
Most people couldnt tell you who he was .
But Paramount countered that with a fairly agressive marketing campaign.
If that is done here as well,
It could lead to the same result.
and Rogen has a good point about Comic Con too.
If they can show cool footage in San Diego that could get some buzz ,
They have a shot at making this a hit.
and with all this extra time that probably means there will be a trailer or two out long before San Diego.
and it sounds like Rogen WANTED the delay.
Thats an indication to me he wants to do it right.
I think this is a VERY GOOD decision, and it just might have saved the film from being a disaster.
Something tells me we will see Kato photos first ,
or at least no photos of Rogen in costume without Kato by his side
Rogen did an interview about a year ago where he said he had been wanting to a film about a superhero sidekick for awhile,
He chose The Green Hornet Because its the only case he could think of where the sidekick was more popular then the hero.
See http://www.theblackbeauty for information about the Green Hornets ride!
Ditto to what “the old man” said. I think it should be delayed to about 5 months before the universe implodes.
Dead to me.
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