David Robert Mitchell's Under The Silver Lake has been bumped back into next year
For the second time in about five months, It Follows director David Robert Mitchell’s weirdo noir movie Under The Silver Lake has been delayed. Last time, back in June, it seemed like the reasoning for the delay was to move it away from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which we all assumed was going to be a big deal, but that explanation doesn’t really work anymore. Under The Silver Lake’s former release date was December 7, but IndieWire says it’s now being held by distributor A24 until April 19, 2019.
Supposedly, this delay can be chalked up to the divisive response Under The Silver Lake received at Cannes, because while our own A.A. Dowd liked it a fair amount, IndieWire notes that other critics were less hot on it. The idea, if you buy this explanation, is that delaying Mitchell’s artsy film into next year will free it from the harsh, conservative opinions of December moviegoers. IndieWire says there have been rumors that Mitchell is re-editing the movie to fit its “dense, wandering narrative” (which concerns Andrew Garfield searching for a missing girl) “into a more palatable format,” but people in-the-know have denied that.
Whatever the justification, A24 did this exact thing in the past with Yorgos Lanthismos’ The Lobster, which hit theaters long after it premiered at Cannes.