Sony Pictures Classics has announced that the Hank Williams biopic I SAW THE LIGHT has been pushed back from its original November release to March 2016.
I SAW THE LIGHT, the Hank Williams biopic starring Tom Hiddleston, was garnering a lot of attention prior to its unveiling at the Toronto International Film Festival and it had been generating some Oscar buzz ahead of its original November 28th, 2015 release. However, the film has received a mixed bag of reviews and hasn’t quite sparked as much attention as some people may have expected after the Festival. Now, Sony has pushed back I SAW THE LIGHT to March 25th, 2016.
However Sony Pictures Classics Co-President Tom Bernard told Deadline that the move wasn’t due to the mixed reaction, but rather Tom Hiddleston’s busy schedule.
“We looked at the landscape and are making a decision that I think is a good one for the film, Tom Hiddleston’s got three movies out potentially so the press is consuming him. I am watching him here in New York everywhere. And he’s going back down the river to catch the monkey [KONG: SKULL ISLAND]. What we saw was I Saw The Light up against the wall in this tight race of people throwing their Oscar movies out, and it’s almost all or nothing.  We thought this was a movie we could do a lot for leading up to its release that I think will put it in a much better place, and we’ll be able to go for it (Oscars) next year with him and re-open it at Christmas.”
It may seem a smart idea to push the film out of the busy Oscar season after so many films have been tipped as great Oscar contenders, but they’ll also be avoiding STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. Bernard mentioned that the wide-release of I SAW THE LIGHT was originally set for December 4th, but that THE FORCE AWAKENS would likely have gobbled up I SAW THE LIGHT’s screens.
“There are just not enough screens, not to mention the elephant in the room that no one is even talking about and that’s how many screens are going to be available when Star Wars comes out (on Dec 18). I believe they may have every screen in the complex except one.”
The new plan will see the first I SAW THE LIGHT trailer released in November and we’ll have to wait until next Oscar season to find out if moving the movie back was the right cause of action.
[…] to Hiddleston’s filming commitments for his new movie SKULL ISLAND, the release date has been pushed back to spring 2016. This allows the actor to be free to promote the movie which he filmed at the end of 2014 and […]
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