Disney Delays "Alamo"

Looks like we won't be remembering the Alamo for a while.

Disney has decided to postpone the release of its historical epic The Alama from Christmas Day to April 2004, ostensibly to give filmmakers more time to complete the film.

"Too often in Hollywood these days, release dates are set before a film has even completed shooting and it forces the director into a situation that compromises the work," Disney Studios chairman Richard Cook said in a statement Wednesday.

Directed by John Lee Hancock (The Rookie) and starring Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton and Jason Patric, The Alamo retraces the siege at the legendary San Antonio mission where some 200 Americans, including Davy Crockett and James Bowie, went to their deaths fighting Mexican General Santa Anna during the Texan War of Independence in 1836.

On first blush the delay comes as a surprise given Disney's Touchstone Pictures had just begun rolling out trailers promoting the film and touting its December opening (making the saga eligible for Oscar consideration).

Then again, those previews weren't exactly wowing audiences, especially when sandwiched between trailers for must-see blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and The Matrix Revolutions. And, per reviews of test-audience screenings published on movie-gossip site Ain't It Cool News, The Alamo wasn't worth remembering. Harry Knowles' spies reported that the characters were boring and the movie was overly long, clocking in at two hours and 45 minutes.

Hancock and Disney, of course, dispute that the film is being delayed to stem any bad buzz. The filmmakers say the December 25 release was untenable and the new date will simply give them more time to craft the western.

"The Alamo has, from a very early age, been the most important story of my life, so when I agreed to rewrite and direct the film, I set the bar very high, both for myself and the finished product," Hancock said. "Postproduction on an epic ensemble piece takes time and no deadline, no prestige release date, no awards season is worth more to me than the movie being fantastic. I owe that to myself as well as the film."

Switching to April will also likely keep The Alamo from getting lost in the late-season movie dump, when studios drop all their would-be Oscar contenders and holiday blockbusters. Aside from The Matrix and Lord of the Rings finales, The Alamo would have had to compete with the Russell Crowe seafaring adventure Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the Nicole Kidman-Jude Law-Renée Zellweger Civil War saga Cold Mountain and Tom Cruise's Ginsu epic The Last Samurai.

"This holiday season is jam-packed with high-profile releases so it may actually work to the film's benefit," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. "[The Alamo]'s a big movie for April. April turns into May you could have a big hit in there. It could actually work well as a pre-summer movie so it may do well for the film."

The move means the film will have to wait until next year for a run at Oscar glory--not that the Mouse House is worried about hardware. "Our experience working with John Lee Hancock has been so terrific and our belief in his opinions, talents and abilities so strong, that we felt his concerns about the looming release date warranted strong consideration," explained Cook. "Ultimately, the end product is more important than the need to meet arbitrary deadlines for awards, etc."

(And if you believe that, we've got a broken-down mission we'd like to sell you.)

Conceived as a historically accurate retelling of the Alamo battle, Hancock's film supposedly shows a more P.C. portrait of the last stand, employing multiple points of view, as opposed to the jingoistic John Wayne vehicle from 1960.

Ironically, the release date switcheroo will likely push the film's reported $80 million budget even higher.