INKHEART pushed back till January 2009!

New Line are desperate to avoid another fantasy disaster after what happened with THE GOLDEN COMPASS this December and really can you blame them? Pumping over $200 million into a project and in return only seeing around a quarter of that back (doesn't matter how well it does worldwide, they sold that cash-cow to finance the film in the first place) soon makes you very anxious about your future projects which exist in the same genre. Their next big fantasy flick is INKHEART, the Brendan Fraser family friendly movie which Variety say has been pushed back from a first quarter 2008 release, to a January 09 opening.

The main factor given out by New Line is that the writers strike made it difficult to adequately market the picture on the advertising spots on first run shows. I can't help but feel that there's another problem here behind the scenes because that's one hell of a delay, over six months... and just because of advertising? No way do we believe that. They got cold feet here. They spent $60 million on this franchise to be led by Brendan Fraser, someone who hasn't been in a big film for years and they can't afford for this to fail. They are hoping that THE MUMMY 3 and JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH 3D revives interest in their actor this Summer and that fantasy movies will be more popular again in a year's time.