No, this is not about the television series Bones (sorry Dave’s Mom). It’s about the rumor that The Lovely Bones is running into production troubles and – as a result – has been pushed back to the fall.
We reported on this on Thursday and again on Friday when we were told by Dreamworks sources to look for Bones in the fall of 2009, not in March like everyone expected.
Now, Dreamworks has told Coming Soon that they never planned to release The Lovely Bones in March ’09:
Turns out, the movie was never scheduled for March 13 at all, there has not been a delay or “rift,” and a fall 2009 launch was always the plan. DreamWorks chief Stacey Snider cleared up the issue by telling ComingSoon.net, “It was a very smooth shoot with no dissent, and all heaven sequences requiring sets or Art Dept involvement were completed on schedule in March. The only shooting remaining involves blue-screen VFX elements, which will be shot in June.”
CS has since deleted the story announcing the March shooting date, though Independent Film Magazine still has their story up, unfettered by Dreamworks personnel.
But…
There is other evidence that the production was supposed to bow into theaters in March.
Take this international release schedule on IMDB:
That looks a lot like someone with the authority to update the IMDB page was gearing up for an international release in March.
Not to mention that the news that Lovely Bones was seeing a March 2009 release was widely reported at the same time as GI Joe’s August ’09 release. If we were so far off reporting a release a full two seasons ahead of the actual plan, why did no one mention this to us before?
Call us crazy, but we’re going to stick by our theory that something happened on the set of Lovely Bones (besides Ryan Goslings sudden replacement) and the release date has been pushed back.
Anytime someone with the money says “we never said that,” you can bet that it’s buzz control.
When we say “something happened,” we don’t always mean “bad.” It could be that Dreamworks saw some dailies and decided to give Peter Jackson a run at an Oscar. Or, something bad could have happened. Or, the guys at Weta could have asked for a few more weeks to render Heaven.
All we’re saying is we’re pretty sure the release date was just changed on us, and now everyone is trying to pretend it didn’t happen.
