Paramount Pictures has shuffled dates on their release schedule, resulting in some genre news that was expected in one case and very unexpected in the other.
We'll start with the news that most fans saw coming – the next FRIDAY THE 13TH film has been delayed for the umpteenth time, getting pushed back from the January 13, 2017 date it has been sitting in for a while to the next Friday the 13th on the calendar: October 13, 2017.
This makes total sense, since the producers at Platinum Dunes only recently hired Breck Eisner to direct the film, working from a screenplay by PRISONERS' Aaron Guzikowski. It is very likely that the film will remain in the October 13th date, since Paramount only has the rights to make a FRIDAY THE 13TH movie until 2018, and since the project has to be filming in California by the end of January to receive a tax credit. There's just no way it would have been ready to be released in January.
Now, the unexpected news – Paramount has also delayed the release of RINGS, the sequel to THE RING that had been scheduled to come out next month, on October 28th. The studio had even started marketing the movie, having recently put out a trailer. RINGS is now set to reach theatres on February 3, 2017.
This is the fourth release date RINGS has been given. It was originally supposed to be out on November 13, 2015.
Directed by F. Javier Gutierrez, written by Akiva Goldsman, David Loucka, and Jacob Aaron Estes, and executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, RINGS has the following synopsis:
In Rings, a young woman becomes worried about her boyfriend when he explores a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a “movie within the movie” that no one has ever seen before…
Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan, and Vincent D'Onofrio star.
Hopefully February 3 is the date that will stick.