The Great Gatsby Pushed Back To 2013

Leonardo DiCaprio’s long-overdue Oscar hopes may be put on ice for another year, with the announcement that his upcoming film The Great Gatsby is being delayed until summer 2013. The much-heralded Baz Luhrmann adaptation was originally scheduled to debut on Christmas Day this year but it is thought that stiff competition from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey prompted the studios to push the release date back by several months.

The announcement was made yesterday by Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow. Warner Bros.’ President of International Distribution Veronica Kwan Vandenberg stated that “Baz is known for being innovative, but with this film he has done something completely unexpected – making it in 3D – while capturing the emotion, the intimacy, the power and the spectacle of the time. The responses we’ve had to some of the early sneak peeks have been phenomenal, and we think The Great Gatsby will be the perfect summer movie around the world.”

The most obvious implication of this is that the film’s Oscars potential is delayed by a year, something which some insiders have suggested might derail its chances of success. Scott Feinberg of the Hollywood Reporter notes that the performances of both DiCaprio and his Oscar-nominated co-star Carey Mulligan may be overlooked, although given the prominence of these roles (Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan are two of the meatier characters in fiction) it may be premature to speculate.

However, DiCaprio does have another extremely high-profile project in the works in the form of Quentin Tarantino’s much-anticipated Django Unchained. Academy voters have been kind to Tarantino before, most notably rewarding Christoph Waltz with a Best Supporting Actor award for his outstanding performance in Inglourious Basterds. Were DiCaprio nominated (and he’s a pretty safe bet), it would likely be in this category for his role as a slave master.

Django Unchained will open, all going well, on Christmas Day in the U.S. and in January 2013 further afield. The Great Gatsby‘s exact new release date hasn’t been set, so reacquaint yourself with the luscious trailer below instead.

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