Lionsgate Films has finally set an official release date for Religulous, Larry Charles‘ follow-up to Borat. Bill Maher hosts this documentary which takes on the the current state of religion. I saw a bunch of footage from this film at Toronto this year, and the festival-goers packed in a huge auditorium were laughing out loud throughout.
Maher had originally said that they were planning to release the film around Easter for maxim controversy, but it appears those plans have been scrapped. Religulous will now hit theaters on June 20th 2008, up against two comedies: Get Smart and The Love Guru. Seems like a bad date on the calendar if you ask me.
After further research, I was able to find that Michael Moore’s Sicko came out on the same week in 2007. Studios sometimes stick similar movies in similar dates, year after year. For example: The Star Wars May release date always gets a big action sci-fi film. I understand the reasoning of this type of calendar planning with big releases, but I think smaller films and documentaries probably deserve a different assessment. But what do I know?
December 13th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Terrible release date. This film has a strong enough topic/premise that it should play on an unbusy date as was originally planned.
This film will generate tons of controversy on talk radio, Fox News, CNN, et al if marketed correctly and as in-your-face as they can do it. If it opens during the summer, a lot of that chatter will be drowned out by summer blockbusters - it probably won’t snag the cover of Entertainment Weekly in June either - and with the director of Borat and Maher it def had/has a shot.
This film has a lot more potential at the box office than Sicko. Easter would have been a bit tasteless (see Golden Compass at Christmas), but should have been the spring.
With Huckabee’s ridiculous religious statements as of late (and Romney’s, on down the line), I can’t wait for this flick! Finally some sanity to the man in the sky with the thunder bolts!
December 13th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
TheDohDoh, you could not be more right about this.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
I hope that this movie focuses more on the ridiculous state of religion (ie: not following their own religious doctrines, etc.) and less on just being on huge bash on religion in general. That really would be tasteless…