Prince of Persia’s Coronation Pushed Back

The Prince of Persia slashes up the film release calendar. 

Disney’s Jerry Bruckheimer produced adaptation of the video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has had its release date pushed back…by almost a year. ComingSoon reports that the film, once scheduled to debut June 19, 2009, will now open open May 28, 2010.

Variety says that Disney’s “official” reason is that they want to allow time for post-production. Okay, a year…? Most people suspect that it had a lot more to do with competition from other films. The original 2009 date had put Prince in the position of opening a week before Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Now in 2010 it will appear on the weekend between the openings of Shrek Goes Fourth and Marvel’s Thor.

You know what I find astonishing about this? How has our film calendar shrunken so much that a movie that wants to change its date has to wait a year to find an opening? Are we now at a point with movies where if they can’t be opened during a narrow band of time from May through July, they’re not going to make money? Would the Prince of Persia be a financial disappointment if it opened in March? Would that time of year not produce enough audience to pay for the movie? That’s just sad. I should also note that the longer break you have between finishing a movie and opening it, the more time you have is for something to go wrong. There’s more time for one of the stars to get in trouble, or for another similar type film to do so well that this one just seems like a copycat, or for a similar film to fail, leaving the genre declared dead. I don’t know, it just seems weird, and as I said, sad, that the opening of a movie has to be delayed a year because the choice of date has to be so finicky.

Prince of Persia stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, and Gemma Atherton. Gyllenhaal will play a sixth century Persian prince, who teams up with a princess (Atherton) to keep the powerful Sands of time out of the hands of a bad guy. Mike Newell is directing.