Scorsese’s Shutter Island booted to February 2010

Here's some bad news to start the week. Paramount Pictures has decided to delay the release of Martin Scorsese's incoming thriller, Shutter Island, until February of next year.

The reasoning behind this, apparently, is that the studio couldn't afford the spend required to push it as an award-winner, and thus it's opted to shunt the film to a new February release date. This moves it out of Oscar contention season, and it'll now arrive just over a week after Universal's The Wolfman, itself a film that's had its release date shunted.

This strikes us as a bizarre decision, though. Is it okay now, given that The Departed finally broke the man's duck, to release a Scorsese movie without having to try and court awards in the process? Surely the film was shaping up to be a solid autumn hit? Also, the notion that Paramount - post the massive combined take of Star Trek, Transformers 2 and now GI Joe - didn't have the cash to properly punt the film rings a little hollow.

According to Deadline Hollywood, that broke the story, it also didn't help matters that Leonardo DiCaprio wouldn't be available in October to undertake promotional duties on the film.

As for the movie itself. Paramount insists that the film has tested very well, and is currently sitting at two hours.

So the film is pretty much done. The buzz was building. And now? We've all got to wait until February for what was one of the best looking films of the year. Bah.

Deadline Hollywood