Delays can mean a variety of things for films. Sometimes it’s a signal that there’s something wrong behind the scenes, leading to the distributor, studio, producers, directors, or whoever changing things at the last minute. Other times, it’s just a simple business decision, attempting to put the film in the most advantageous position to make the most money. But then you have “Under the Silver Lake.” And now, after an initial six-month delay, the highly-anticipated film is getting pushed back again, and it leaves us scratching our heads.
IndieWire just reported that filmmaker David Robert Mitchell’s upcoming film “Under the Silver Lake,” which premiered earlier this year at Cannes, is getting pushed back, yet again. Originally, ‘Silver Lake’ was going to catapult from Cannes into the summer movie season, debuting in theaters on June 22. Then, for reasons still unknown (which we speculated could be the result of the less-than-stellar reception in France), A24 pushed the release to December 7. Now, it appears that A24 is back at it and pushed ‘Silver Lake’ into the next year, announcing a new release date of April 19, 2019.
For those not aware, “Under the Silver Lake” is a pulpy, noir film that stars Riley Keough and Andrew Garfield. The film follows Garfield’s character as he attempts to unravel the mystery, and potential conspiracy, behind Keough’s character’s disappearance the night after they met. ‘Silver Lake’ is Mitchell’s follow-up to his critical and box office hit horror film “It Follows.”
According to the report, the official reason for the latest move is to give the film “the best possible chance in the marketplace.” Well, yeah, we’d hope so. And we’d tend to believe that if this film wasn’t already moved six months previously. So, now we’re left to speculate and attempt to rationalize the latest delay. And there are a couple obvious reasons.
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First, and foremost, if we take the announcement at face value, the distributor is looking at a stacked December 2018 release schedule. Not only will ‘Silver Lake’ compete for those prestige screens against an onslaught of legit Oscar contenders such as “Green Book,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “The Favourite,” and “Ben is Back,” but if the film’s initial reviews are any indication, Mitchell’s latest film could be easily forgotten and left out in the cold. So yeah, moving to April 2019 makes a lot of sense.
But what that doesn’t answer is why the film was moved from June to begin with. A24 and those behind-the-scenes folks on ‘Silver Lake’ deny that Mitchell is making any editing changes to the film, and that the version that is being shown next April is the same one that was shown in May at Cannes. If that’s the case, then a six-month delay followed by another four-month delay doesn’t really compute. There was plenty of release dates between June and December that ‘Silver Lake’ could have occupied. Hell, there’s even early 2019, when the box office tends to be a little bare. It just is odd, is all.
That being said, with a new April 2019 release date, it does open “Under the Silver Lake” up for a potential festival run in early 2019 at Sundance, among others. If that’s the case, perhaps A24 is looking to build some better buzz for the film.
Either way, if you want to see ‘Silver Lake’ before the end of 2018, it sounds like you should head to the AFI Fest in a couple weeks because other than that, we’re all going to wait until April.