The Release of "Foxcatcher" Gets Moved Back to 2014

Steve Carell

It has been quite a week for pushing back expectations on potential Oscar nominees. Earlier we wrote about how The Wolf of Wall Street, which remains the biggest blow. Not to be outdone, director Bennett Miller's latest film, Foxcatcher, has taken suit. In an ironic fashion, the news was delivered mere hours after the debut of the first trailer, which is a haunting look at one of my wildcard nominee selections.

I will admit that a large portion of Foxcatcher's appeal was that I mistakenly took it to be a Paul Newman biopic based on Steve Carell pictures. After research, it is far scarier and more intriguing than that. According to IMDb: 

"The story of Olympic Wrestling Champion Mark Schultz and how paranoid schizophrenic John duPont killed his brother, Olympic Champion Dave Schultz."

 Now that is an intense story, especially when it features Carell is playing the lead and Channing Tatum was also capable of presenting a breakout role. Of course, some of the bigger appeal is that it comes from Miller, who has had two films, Capote and Moneyball in the Best Picture race and has had considerable gravitas, considering that he got Jonah Hill (Moneyball) a Best Supporting Actor nomination and lead Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) to a Best Actor win. Who knows what he could do with two actors who don't actually have much of a resume that sounds like promising Oscar nomination potential.

Sony Pictures Classics announced that the film would be moved back to 2014 as to allow the filmmakers to finish work on it. It has been scrapped of its December 20 release date and it is unsure if it will play at the AFI Film Festival in November as initially planned. As of right now, trailers for the film were ironically pulled almost as soon as they went up. 

While I do not promise that this link will work for those reading in the future, here is a video that worked upon the write-up of this piece. It is a haunting, intriguing look at a film that has quickly evolved into one of my more anticipated movies of 2014 and probably reason to tout Carell for a nomination, provided further trailers keep this intensity.

This is the third film that I had written about in my pre-predictions to get moved back (the third being Grace of Monaco). Let's hope that it is the last.