Bad news today for Robert Downey Jr: he won't be capping off his stellar year with an Oscar nomination/win*, because his next film, The Soloist, has had its release date shifted to March, putting it out of Oscar contention this time around.
The film, starring Downey as a journalist who befriends and tries to help a musically gifted drifter (Jamie Foxx) is based on a true story and directed by Joe Wright, so you just know that someone was hoping for Oscars for it. The move from a November 21US release date to March 13 is said to be down to distributor Paramount trying to cut costs in the fourth quarter of this year, although there are dark and unsubstantiated mutters in Tinseltown that The Soloist is caught up in fallout from the Paramount-DreamWorks divorce and that The Soloist, a DreamWorks film, is not getting any love as a result.
DreamWorks, however, says that the picture's commercial enough to do very well in March, and confidently announced that "the movie will win out of this". Overall, it looks like another Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince type situation where the studio needs the release on its schedule next year rather than this one.
Unless Hollywood overcomes its comic-book snobbery and recognises just how good he was as Tony Stark, of course, or in Tropic Thunder. Paramount, who released the latter, have promised to campaign for a nomination for that Supporting Role.