It looks like George Clooney’s The Monuments Men won’t be opening this year, meaning it also won’t be in the running for the upcoming Academy Awards. The film was originally slated to open December 18th, but has been bumped to early 2014. The reason? Clooney states that the visual effects work on the World War II-era drama needs more time.
The Monuments Men also stars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, John Goodman, Bob Balaban, and Bill Murray.
The LA Times reports that Clooney needs more time to complete The Monuments Men, saying:
“We just didn’t have enough time … If any of the effects looked cheesy, the whole movie would look cheesy. We simply don’t have enough people to work enough hours to finish it.”
Although the 2014 release takes The Monuments Men out of contention for an Oscar this year, Clooney doesn’t seem too upset by that fact:
“All we’ve ever said, from the very beginning, is that we wanted to make a commercial, non-cynical piece of entertainment.”
In addition to The Monuments Men reschedule, there are a number of other high-profile films that have had their release dates shuffled around, including Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, likely moving from November 15th to December 25th, Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco and James Gray’s The Immigrant, all of which were once set to debut this year, have been delayed to 2014.