Well, this is interesting. It was just this morning that the The Playlist honchos were talking "The Master" over cups of coffee, and wondering what Harvey Weinstein's gameplan would be. With the film not appearing in the Venice or TIFF lineups, and with rumors of a Fantastic Fest showing, would it be possible that Paul Thomas Anderson's highly anticipated film would be skipping the festival circuit altogether? While Harv knows how to work festivals to his awards season advantage, PTA has never been that huge on the whole process, pretty much forgoing it entirely for "There Will Be Blood" (save a premiere at the aforementioned geek haunt in Austin). But now there's another twist…
The Weinstein Company have now moved the film up a whole month to from October 12th to September 14th, placing it right at the tail end of TIFF and well before Fantastic Fest, which starts on September 20th (so scratch that). It's a helluva interesting move, so let us make a guess here. While some folks think that "The Master" still might slot in at the last minute in Venice or Toronto (or both) we kind of doubt it, but we do think the film has a very good chance to premiere at Telluride. Why? While Harv loves the red carpets, PTA and, more importantly, Joaquin Phoenix don't really. Our guess is that the movie will go to Colorado where it will still get the pre-release buzz it needs, and allow both the director and main actor to talk to select, key press before it hits theaters. Again, that's just our guess and things could change — nothing has been predictable about this movie on any level — but our gut tells us the release date is a pretty good indication of the game plan. If they were planning multiple festival appearances, that October date would've made more sense.
Anyway, taking the slot of the now open date in October is Andrew Dominik's "Killing Them Softly," which will land on October 19th. It too is curiously absent from the first wave of TIFF titles, but being added later isn't out of the question and/or it will pop up at the New York Film Festival instead. Still lots of time to sort out the plan for that film (which we presume will depend on sorting out Brad Pitt's press duties on the film versus his reshoot schedule for "World War Z") which we hope includes a trailer very soon. [Variety]