“Molly’s Game” Premiere Delayed Until Christmas

Molly’s Game, the big poker movie this year (and the first one we’ve had high hopes for since 2007’s The Grand), has had its release pushed back to a limited release on Christmas day this year followed by a wide-release on the 5th of January 2018.

Moving a release date is always done for a mix of reasons. A slew of large blockbusters have been pushed out to allow for reshoots. Rogue One being the most infamous example of this, where more than half the shots in the trailer failed to make the final cut. While in other cases it has been a response to economic or marketing pressures. But when it comes to January releases it tends to mean one of two things: the movie is really really bad, or really really good.

Big tentpole movies come out in November time and early Summer when the biggest crowds are in the cinema. By January turnout tends to drop to nothing, so studios use it as a landfill month in which they air the films they are too sheepish to show an actual audience, a move dubbed ‘Fuck You It’s January’ by RedLetterMedia. There have been mixed reviews of Molly’s Game from the festival, so it is entirely possible a producer has panicked over one of the worse ones. 

There is another, more optimistic reason to move a movie into the dead of midwinter. Occasionally the hit on cinema turnout is taken in order to qualify a late-in-the-year-release for the various Oscars, Globes and Palms but it can be a gamble. That said, with Aaron Sorkin, Idris Elba and Jessica Chastain on the movie poster, Molly’s Game has a decent shot at pulling in a fair amount of brass purely on the basis of critical goodwill towards the main players. Besides few of the bad reviews have been total pannings, and some of the good ones have been positively gushy. 

Although, if you were hoping for Molly’s Game to be the next Rounders you may need to modify your expectations; Aaron Sorkin has written movies about baseball in which baseball barely appears, and a Facebook movie in which the website’s development is secondary by far to the lawsuit that ensues (a structure he seems to have borrowed from himself in creating the Idris Elba character). Sorkin has said he is more interested in Molly’s journey than in the game of poker, so it sounds like the poker will be more macguffin than set piece.

In the end though, whether this move means anything will be proved in the tempering cold of the Christmas season.