After a disappointing 2011 in which their films underperformed greatly, CBS Films have been doing a little better this year. February's "The Woman In Black" proved to be a sleeper hit, and Lasse Hallstrom's "Salmon Fishing In The Yemen" did pretty decently as well a month or two later. Next up for the company is "The Words," which opens next month, but they have done a little tinkering with their release schedule for further on the year.
The good news is that we're a little closer to seeing Martin McDonagh's "Seven Psychopaths," his follow up to the excellent "In Bruges." The film, which stars Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell as a trio of friends who become the target of a psychotic gangster (Woody Harrelson), will premiere as part of the Midnight Madness section at TIFF next month, but wasn't set for release until November 2nd, and even then only as part of a limited roll-out. But now, CBS have moved the film up nearly a whole month, and it'll now open wide on October 12th, opposite Ben Affleck's "Argo" and the Kevin James vehicle "Here Comes The Boom." This perhaps suggests that the company sees it more as a commercial prospect than an awards play, but we'd always suspected that anyway, so it's no great shock.
However, it does mean that the film that used to occupy the same slot, Michael Hoffman's "Gambit," the Coen Brothers-scripted remake of the 1960s Michael Caine/Shirley Maclaine caper flick, has been shuffled away, to a date sometime in Winter 2013. We assume this means January/February rather than November/December, as a push back of the film, which stars Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz, for a whole year would be a real warning sign. But seeing as the film felt like something of an afterthought at this point among some tough competition, and was never going to be an awards play, it likely makes sense. "Seven Psychopaths" will hit theaters on November 2nd, and "Gambit" will follow sometime in 2013. [Box Office Mojo]