‘Babylon’ Moved to Nationwide Christmas Release by Paramount
thewrap.com“Babylon” to a wide release ahead of Christmas Day on Dec. 23. Damien Chazelle’s period dramedy set during the Golden Age of Hollywood was previously scheduled for a platform Christmas Day release in New York and Los Angeles before expanding wide in early January.
Now, this $78 million film will go up against top holiday competition, with studio sources expressing confidence that the film can find its own lane as an alternative to franchise films like 20th Century’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” and Universal/DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.” Starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, “Babylon” is set in the 1920s at the end of the silent film era, following several people within the nascent film industry at various stages of their careers. “It was pure cinema, just image and music,” Chazelle said at the film’s trailer premiere at TIFF. “One of the tragic ironies of that era is that right when the art form was reaching its apogee, the legs got cut out.”The move also comes a day after Sony moved its own adult dramedy, “A Man Called Otto,” from a mid-December wide release to a NY/LA release on Christmas Day ahead of a Jan.
14 wide release. The film will be directed by Marc Forster and stars Tom Hanks in an adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s Swedish novel “A Man Called Ove,” which was previously adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 2015.
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