WHO ORDERED THE SIN EATER?
In Australia, the posters and the trailer still say the movies called The Sin Eater. But in the states, the Heath Ledger starrer is going by the new name of The Order. According to the films director, he was asked to give the film a altered name for the states by the Fox Marketing Department. ‘Theyd end up spending most of their advertising space just trying to explain what a sin eater was,’ Brian Helgeland tells SciFi Wire. Helgeland added that the films release was delayed from its original January date because of marketing concerns, not because the film had visual-effects problems, as rumored. ‘They really felt that wasnt a good time,’ Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) said. ‘Its definitely not a summer movie, so as it got closer to summer, they just couldnt find a spot they were happy with. So they were basically waiting for the summer to end to come out in the fall. Its a dark movie, so they wanted to avoid the happy-ending season. Out of that, a story started that there [were] problems with the effects. But no one really knows where that story started, because the movie was done [by January], so there wasnt any more work to be done with effects.’
Zap2it.com also caught up with Helgeland, who said the films being marketed a little wrong. Let’s put it this way, while the film is being marketed in the vein of ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘The Order’ is instead more like ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ he says. ‘[Fox] won’t come right out and admit it but they’re super nervous about it because it’s got stuff about the church — not even in a bad way,’ Helgeland explains. ‘But I think because of Mel Gibson’s movie, they’re like, ‘Well now we have a religious movie too that we didn’t even realize we were making.”
While Helgeland feels the religious aspect may be causing the studio to keep a little hushed about the film, he doesn’t feel like they are dumping the movie. ‘No, I don’t think so, because they’re spending a lot of money, I mean relative to the budget. They’re spending money to open it and they’ve got all the advertising out there. But it’s like wherever you go they have the Fox logo as small as possible,’ he laughs. ‘It’s still getting released and everything; we’ll see what happens. I have a strange feeling — and I’m usually very pessimistic — but I have a strange feeling that it’s all going to work out,’ he adds.
The film opens next week in the states. Theres apparently been no media screenings.
And for those living here in the UK who are wondering just exactly what you should be looking for it will in fact be released as ‘The Sin Eater’ here also. If you try renting out a fairly new release from your local video store such as Phone Booth for example you can catch sight of the full UK trailer.
Courtesy of MovieHole
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