Mike Leigh’s historic epic Peterloo won’t be a player in this year’s U.S. awards race after all.
Amazon Studios has decided to move the film’s release in theaters from Nov. 9 to April 5, 2019. Peterloo, however, will still open in U.K. cinemas this fall in hopes of landing BAFTA nominations.
Britain’s Film4 and the BFI co-financed the Amazon-backed movie, which recounts the bloody and notorious Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, England, on Aug. 16, 1819, when more than 60,000 people gathered peacefully to call for parliamentary reform for working men to have a vote alongside the propertied classes and for Manchester to have representation in Parliament.
Fearing the sort of political uprising that had helped ignite a revolution in France less than three decades earlier, jittery magistrates sent in the cavalry. Fifteen people were killed, including women and children — the first fatality was a baby boy knocked out his mother’s arms — and more than 400 were injured.
Peterloo drew mixed reviews after recently playing at both the Venice and Toronto film festivals. (Its Rotten Tomatoes score currently rests at 65 percent.)
Amazon Studios will still have other hopeful awards contenders this fall, including Beautiful Boy (due out Oct. 12), Suspiria (Oct. 26) and Cold War (Dec. 21).
Amazon’s original movie unit suffered a major box-office blow last month with the debut of Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself, which has only earned $3.6 million in its first two weeks in wide release.
Oct. 2, 12:25 p.m. An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect release date. THR regrets the error.
