Blood Diamond Moved to December 8
I noticed earlier on the WB movie page for Blood Diamond that the release date was Dec 8 but thought it was a mistake but now there's a press release to announce the change - also that the film is rated R which surprised me - that's going to make it tough for its box office unless it gets amazing reviews like TD is getting, IMO http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/061027/20061027005620.html?.v=1

It's a heavy subject, so I can understand the R rating. Here's hoping it gets some great press...

well, except for the box office angle, I'm actually pleased that it's R rated material - means, hopefully, that it won't be watered down or dumbed down for audiences on the issue of blood diamonds.

Abstract Read about change on Hollywood Elsewhere site......certainly looking forward to the film ..and the earlier date means that I will have time for several viewings before the 'hazy crazy days of Christmas shopping/parties' ! Thanks for posting info :)

It makes more sense since Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith's film, is being released the weekend BD was originally slated to come out. Smith is a bigger draw than Leo and his film won't be R-rated.

probably not the reason it was moved however since they would have considered that when they initially placed it on Dec 15. I'm pretty sure any release date in Dec would have formidible competition. Not certain what type pf film Pursuit of Happyness is as ive heard zip about it but Will Smith in a movie is not an instant hit. The relatively few movies he's made are mostly blockbusters with a built-in audience a al Men in Black or Independence Day but when he's starred in other types of ilms, namely dramas, they have not drawn the masses, e.g., Ali or The Legend of Bagger Vance.So the move is probably the reasons WB gave, and giving it and its stars the most exposure for Oscar considerations

Smith's film is a timely story (based on a true story) about an african american man and his small son who struggled after his wife left him to make it. I can't remember all the details except that it's kind of a true rags to riches story about this guy who eventually became a successful stockbroker in NYC despite almost insurmountable odds against him succeeding, full of the kinds of tearjerking moments that AMPAS and OPRAH will just love. Also in the few screenings that have occurred, it and Smith have gotten raves apparently. The trailer looks decent enough and Smith actually seems more restrained and believable than usual. I can see it doing well among similar folks who loved Kramer v. Kramer in which Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep both ended up winning oscars and among african americans or others who have struggled to make it and who undoubtedly will find it uplifting and hopeful. Smith is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, btw, with the stats to prove it. I'm not promoting him just stating some reality. The main thing is how well it will play with folks and AMPAs. It definitely won't be R-Rated so it's chances of doing better than decent B.O. are very good indeed.

Wasn't disputing that Will Smith is a big movie star or the quality of his work in his upcoming film; his box office stats prove that he is a force in that category- with films like Men in Black franchise and Independence Day, he's box office figures are truly phenomenal.All of which I acknowledged. But with any movie star, usually its the vehicle itself that is the drawing card. As examples, I gave his other films that didn't do well whatsoever, so its not automatic with him as far as box office, just as it is with other box office champs like Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks - so I'm also talking about reality and not because I have any animus towards Will or anybody else :lol: , The fact is any weekend in Dec pretty much is going to be competive. Dec 8 has a comedy with Winslet that I think will do well - people are in a holiday mood and usually want to see something lighthearted at that time of the year.The way Pursuit of Happyness is described seems to indicate it will draw well and sounds like the kind of role that usually draws an Oscar nom. My point, actually, was about the move WB made - since it was recent movr, it probably had more to do with how TD has fared and how preview audiences have reacted to BD, than whether it was facing one particular movie on the initial date - if that was the reason, they would have placed it on another date earlier.

I bet WB has a better idea of the worthiness of their film and the performances it it than people who haven't seen it yet :wink: I think they know what they have on their hands and doing their best to give it the best chance for success. And I agree the move is to also see where to position Leo in terms of Oscar noms.As far as buzz, even with the very early preview audience, the reviews I read at AICN were overall positive. Two writers who have seen it more recently Caryn James and Anne Thompson, have both written articles on Leo which similarly seem to indicate they think Leo's performance in his two films this year has moved him to an even higher notch. But what is the value of "buzz"as an indicator of anything anyway? The Departed had some of the worst pre-release buzz I've seen and look how that has turned out :P

At this point, it's hard to say what the buzz is -- "exactly". That's my main thrust here. The buzz may be good for DiCaprio and that can only help him with The Departed in my mind. The film, who knows for sure? I'll believe good buzz for Diamond, the actual film, when it becomes truly apparent to me. Studios always want to build up their films prior to release, especially bigger "self-important" films with a message. They kept a low profile on The Departed largely out of deference to Scorsese and because they thought it more commercial than oscarworthy. Who knew?

we must have different definition of the word "buzz". To me, it's not something made by the studio or something they control, it's word of mouth or what's being said by people on the internet, discussed by people who like to discuss films, not studio heads. The "buzz" on The Departed prior to its release was not that great - so sometimes good or bad buzz doesn't always translate to how a film is perceived after its released. Of course, one should withhold one's opinion about BD till the film is actually seen by more people ;that should be the case with any film, not just Leo's films :wink: - and why take into consideration the buzz for one film but not another? I suppose it's always hard to remain objective in discussing something as subjective as movies though. btw, I'm personally not too concerned or caught up about studios pushing a certain film or actor for an Oscar and what that implies; the awards don't mean that much to me; it's more about the quality of a film or performance and how I react to those things, not whether they're ultimately considered "Oscar-worthy" in some chosen groups' minds.

Fair enough!!!

Interesting article by LA Weekly writer Nikki Finke on smear campaign against the movie: Throwing Precious Stones The spin campaign against Blood Diamond is on By NIKKI FINKE Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - 10:45 am For more than a decade now, rap and hip-hop have made bling the thing, and no one more than Russell Simmons, who even started his own diamond-encrusted-jewelry line two years ago. “So I said to Warner Bros., get to Russell,” said Bonnie Abaunza. As the Los Angeles–based director of Amnesty International’s celebrity-outreach program, she has been using the studio’s December release of Blood Diamond to focus attention on so-called conflict diamonds (gems mined in war zones and sold to finance the fighting in underdeveloped countries) and the human-rights questions that still surround the diamond industry. So on September 21, when Simmons showed up in a midtown-Manhattan hotel to attend the Clinton Global Initiative Conference, Abaunza seized the moment. “I just saw this movie, Blood Diamond. You could really make a difference on this issue with this generation that buys the diamonds and doesn’t know the history,” she explained to him. Simmons admitted he didn’t know much about the conflict-diamond issue, but confided that “De Beers just contacted me and wants to work with me on this.” He was referring to the world’s largest diamond producer, which also supplies the bling for his jewelry company. Still, Abaunza was hopeful. She followed up with an information-packed letter. She screened the film for him. “He told Warner Bros. that he was moved,” she recalled. So moved that this powerful black entrepreneur, known for his work on behalf of modern-day civil rights and social justice, announced last week that he will lead “a fact-finding mission” about the diamond industry in South Africa and Botswana from November 26 to December 4. But the trip is not being sponsored by Amnesty International. Instead, it’s being organized and underwritten by the Diamond Information Center — which just happens to be the De Beers cartel’s U.S. marketing arm. “Coincidence? C’mon,” a frustrated Abaunza told me. All along, the real question behind the scenes of Blood Diamond — an action-adventure pic set against the backdrop of civil war and chaos in the diamond-mining center of 1990s Sierra Leone, starring Leo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou, directed by Ed Zwick and produced by Paula Weinstein — is not whether it will be an Oscar contender (probably) or a critics’ favorite (possibly). It’s just how much mud the World Diamond Council and its flacks and flunkies and friends are planning to throw at the well-intentioned film and its too-liberal-for-the-room credits. Now the answer is clear: a lot, more than enough to dirty its awards chances. It’s rare in Hollywood, home to most things horrible, to have good vs. evil play out offscreen as well as on. (As opposed to seeing this as a level playing field where the really rich are ganging up on the really rich, so, in on sense, they deserve each other.) Yet here, the tactic of choice, already evidenced, is to smear the film’s production by accusing everyone involved of exploiting the Africans in much the same execrable way the diamond industry has done for decades — even though the director, the stars, the producer, and even Alan Horn, the studio mogul who pushed the project, are known for their progressive activism, and even though not one do-gooder, Amnesty International (the Nobel Peace Prize–winning organization), but two, Global Witness (the Nobel Peace Prize–nominated org), both endorsed the film. But, in terms of Oscar, damaging allegations, especially those smelling of hypocrisy, can stink up an Academy Awards campaign. And that’s what is happening. Witness October 23’s Page Six charge that Warner Bros. reneged on a promise to provide prosthetic limbs to all the orphaned African teenage and child amputees who appeared as extras in the movie, or at the very least planned to delay making good until the start of publicity for the film. It’s juicy gossip, made all the more tasty by the spectre of all those limbless kids crying out to Hollywood for new legs and arms. Zwick was appalled, not because of that image, but because it wasn’t true. “This is a very cynical and appalling tack to take, and in the worst taste, especially given what we all tried to do while we were there,” he told me by phone from London, describing the “Blood Diamond Fund” that cast and crew set up with their own money, which was matched by Warner Bros., to fund good works in the African communities where the pic filmed. “What I do think is, this is the work of someone who clearly bears the film ill will.” Amnesty’s Abaunza called the smear “beyond loathsome” because she also knew it was false. “Anybody in the entertainment industry who knows Ed and Paula and Leo and Djimon and Jennifer would know that these people would never, ever condone anything like this. Neither they nor we would risk our reputations,” she told me. “I believe a line has been crossed. To give the impression that this despicable act was done against people who’ve already suffered tremendously is just unconscionable, and whoever planted that story should be held accountable.” Abaunza went on the record with me about her suspicions as to who was the culprit. “I don’t think it happens to be a coincidence that, as we get closer to the movie’s release, this story happens, and so many stories pitting the diamond industry against this movie in September and October happened. Yes, I think this story was planted by the World Diamond Council, and I think this story was planted in an attempt to impact the Oscar buzz on this film. But there’s no way to prove it. And the stories are going to get nastier.” She was right. Two days after I spoke to her, Page Six followed up with an even worse item, describing how “the producers of the upcoming Blood Diamond not only exploited amputees in Africa, they created a new amputee.” Only this time, the gossip was partly true. Because of a tragic on-set accident, South African native and professional special-effects technician supervisor Edward Visage working with the second unit of production severely injured his hand. Doctors determined it could not be saved after he was evacuated to the hospital. The Page Six item quoted an unnamed source claiming that “Warner Bros. was too cheap to bring in a special-effects guy from the U.S.,” a charge that the studio denied to me. “The accident was investigated by local authorities, and it was determined that proper procedures were followed,” said a spokesperson. “The studio has provided Mr. Visage with appropriate assistance and compensation. He is currently back to work.” It’s the kind of awful episode that reinforces everyone’s queasy feelings about Hollywood, which manages to maim or kill people working on its movies at an alarming rate. That it happened on Blood Diamond is just the sort of tragedy which the film’s enemy can exploit. The timing of the film’s release, moved up from December 15 to December 8, is a nightmare for the diamond industry since the Christmas season accounts for up to 50 percent of a fine jeweler’s sales and 75 percent of the profit. And then Valentine’s Day will coincide with Blood Diamond’s Oscar campaign. I’ve heard estimates that the World Diamond Council has earmarked a $15-plus-million spin campaign to deep-six Blood Diamond’s impact by underwriting informational Web sites, position papers, international confabs, high-profile newspaper ads, new marketing from J. Walter Thompson, and PR from Hollywood’s Allan Meyer. In the past, Meyer has been on the side of the angels, albeit rich angels, handling such hot-button political movies as Steven Spielberg’s Munich and Brian Grazer’s The Da Vinci Code. But for the past year, his job consists of crushing Zwick’s movie and its message. He disavowed to me any World Diamond Council responsibility for the Page Six items and even claims, “We and Warner Bros. have no fundamental disagreements.” But Meyer did outline recently for NPR exactly how to plan an anti-pic campaign, and, from the looks of things, it was followed to a tee: “Tell your story first... Get out in front of the release so you frame the issue... Start planning your response 12 to 18 months before the movie comes out... Start talking about the issues that matter to you in a context that has nothing with the movie.” After seeing a leaked script, Meyer met with Warner’s PR. But I also have in hand a copy of a letter addressed to Zwick jointly from the chairmen/CEOs of the WDC and the international diamond watchdog group known as Kimberley Process, respectively, It specifically asks the director to include a “written broadcast message at the end of the film, and in accompanying promotional language” — in other words, a disclaimer — “to provide some acknowledgment of the huge changes that have occurred in the diamond trade since 1999” in Sierra Leone. (Interestingly, tacked to the end of the October 23 Page Six item was a denial that De Beers had ever demanded the disclaimer. True, it wasn’t De Beers but the WDC that asked for one — although the diamond cartel does provide most of the funding for the trade lobbying group.) What Page Six, or any media hasn’t written, is, as I first reported on DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com: what really happened on the set of Blood Diamond. The production arrived in Africa ready to film for the next four months in two places: South Africa’s South Zulu Nataal and Mozambique’s Maputo. “To be there is to want to do something. So, to be in those places for that length of time, you can’t help but be moved by what you see every day,” Zwick told me. “And all of us together just talked about what we ourselves could do. And knowing all the while that would turn out to be a drop in the bucket compared to the needs all around us. But the need was so great.” At the suggestion of the Mozambique production manager Nick Laws, cast and crew contributed to a fund. “There was no twisting of arms. And then we asked the studio to match it, which they agreed to,” Zwick recalled. The “Blood Diamond Fund” totals in the six figures. I’ve heard varying numbers, ranging from $200,000 up to $500,000. “That may seem trivial,” Zwick emphasized, knowing how mean that seems compared to, say, the tens of millions of dollars Leo earns on big studio films, “but the Blood Diamond production was also pumping as much as $40 million straight into the local economy. Cash for building roads, hiring drivers, paying for hotel accommodations. When you make a film in a place where the need is desperate, money is like a shot in the arm of the local economy.” Since its inception, and continuing even now past the end of filming, the fund is being administered by a Maputo-based international accountancy firm under the supervision of Laws and João Ribeiro, the production managers in Mozambique. So far, says Zwick, “The fund has targeted specific needs in those villages, and some neighborhoods that were more impoverished where we had worked. To wit: One neighborhood was in terrible need of a well being dug, another neighborhood needed help with a septic system, still another had to repair road damage that was making it hard for villagers to go to and from work, still another needed a classroom repaired, and so on. And replacement of prosthetics was among the them.” Zwick and Warner Bros. told me the fund hasn’t finished assessing needs or administering funds, and filling more prosthetic needs is on the list. While the studio maintains it made no specific promise to provide prosthetics to every extra who needed them, it assured me that money from the fund has already gone to children’s organizations that disperse prosthetics. All of the dough raised from Blood Diamond premieres in the U.S. and England will go to related charities. But the diamond industry has a lot more to worry about than Leo and Jennifer and Ed and Paula’s pic. These days, a fresh wave of MCs is backing away from the urban stylin’ promulgated by Simmons et al. Both Lupe Fiasco, in “Diamond Conflict,” and Kanye West, in “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” sing the same anti-war-for-profit message. Soon, very soon, bling may no longer mean cha-ching. http://www.laweekly.com/general/deadline-hollywood/throwing-precious-stones/14885/

I knew ,just knew, something smelled rotten when I read those Page Six items. I suspected then that those stories were planted by someone working for the diamond companies - it's Page Six and NY Post but its still shocking that they would just print something like that without checking the source.