It's a good news / bad news scenario for Joe Cornish's Attack The Block in North America.
The good news is that Sony / Screen Gems have announced a theatrical release date of July 29th. Despite an enormously positive response at SXSW, theatrical release was a major question mark for the film in these parts thanks to widespread questions about whether local audiences could follow the accents. So a theatrical release is good and welcome news.
The bad news is that the release is July 29th, which puts the film in head to head competition with Jon Favreau's Cowboys & Aliens and when a pair of scifi action films are released head to head ... well, lets just say Cowboys & Aliens has a lot more marketing muscle behind it.
If Attack The Block is going to survive and thrive despite this release strategy - which it thoroughly deserves to do - then it's going to need a lot of ground level support. Opening weekend numbers are pretty much all that matters to the financial bigwigs these days, so pencil the date in and see it then. Leave the Cowboys until later in the week, they'll do just fine without you.
The good news is that Sony / Screen Gems have announced a theatrical release date of July 29th. Despite an enormously positive response at SXSW, theatrical release was a major question mark for the film in these parts thanks to widespread questions about whether local audiences could follow the accents. So a theatrical release is good and welcome news.
The bad news is that the release is July 29th, which puts the film in head to head competition with Jon Favreau's Cowboys & Aliens and when a pair of scifi action films are released head to head ... well, lets just say Cowboys & Aliens has a lot more marketing muscle behind it.
If Attack The Block is going to survive and thrive despite this release strategy - which it thoroughly deserves to do - then it's going to need a lot of ground level support. Opening weekend numbers are pretty much all that matters to the financial bigwigs these days, so pencil the date in and see it then. Leave the Cowboys until later in the week, they'll do just fine without you.