Paramount Pictures is shuffling around several of its tentpole films scheduled to hit in the next twelve months.
First up they’ve pushed back the Tom Cruise-led “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” by five days from December 16th to December 21st in the United States, though the film will maintain the Dec. 16th release in most international markets.
In the old slot, ‘Mission’ was slated to go head to head with the opening weekend of “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”, a film catering to much of the same audience. Now it’ll hit on the holiday weekend against David Fincher’s R-rated “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” which is aiming for an older audience.
After several years featuring a bunch of major tentpoles, next Summer for the studio is looking rather quiet. Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” is scheduled for May, Marc Forster’s “World War Z” hasn’t set a date yet but seems a certainty for a release sometime in June or July, plus the “G.I. Joe” and “Star Trek” sequels.
With the production start date of the ‘Trek’ sequel being pushed further back and the script still being tweaked, the chances of the film making its intended July 29th 2012 has been looking unlikely for a while now. Many have been wondering when the film would get pushed back a few months.
Now, Deadline reports that J.J. Abrams has finally committed to directing the film which had been put on hold until the filmmaker was locked in.
It looks like he’ll now begin prepping for the film with a January 2012 start of production date which would mean either a late 2012 or a Summer 2013 bow.
As a result the ‘Joe’ sequel, now called “G.I. Joe: Retaliation”, will be moved up two weeks to take over the old ‘Trek 2’ release slot of July 29th 2012.
Finally, the studio looks to be targeting a February 8th 2013 release for Christopher McQuarrie’s adaptation of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel “One Shot” starring Tom Cruise.
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