When it was announced this week that Relativity has moved the release date of Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” follow-up “Out of the Furnace” from October 4 to November 27, I wondered what that might mean for the film’s original film festival circuit plans. And indeed, as I hear it now, the plan is to skip that altogether and keep the mystery going until it hits screens in a post-Thanksgiving frame that has done well for recent Oscar players like “The King’s Speech,” “The Artist” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”
Of course, all of those films built word of mouth at Toronto, and this is a star-studded film that therefore plays well to that environment. So things could change. Relativity, per president Robbie Brenner’s quote, sees awards in this film’s future and that’s all certainly part of the box office strategy, too (as it always is). It’ll be interesting to see how it navigates the always crowded waters of that late-November, early-December frame.
Meanwhile, a teaser poster for the film has dropped, playing up that aforementioned cast and the murky atmosphere of the revenge thriller. Just the title and the heavy-hitting names. Give it a look below, and expect the first trailer to hit sometime very soon. For more, check out my interview with Cooper about the road after “Crazy Heart” and the full plate of potential projects he’s loaded up here.