20th Century Fox Reshuffles its 2011 Release Schedule

Time to change the calendar, folks. Most of you are probably still getting used to writing “2011” on all your important documents, but most of 2011’s top films had their releases scheduled months ago. Of course, these dates are flexible — and, as we see with 20th Century Fox, sometimes release dates need to be reshuffled for various reasons. Hit “more” to find out what films will be affected by this!

Most importantly, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, starring Jim Carrey, has been moved forward from an August release date (where it probably would have faced stiff competition from other kid-friendly releases The Smurfs and Spy Kids 4) to June 14th. But this puts the film in close competition with Cars 2, which opens the weekend after, so I’m not sure how well thought out that decision was…

The news that concerns me the most is that Rise of the Apes, the Planet of the Apes prequel, has been rescheduled from June 24th to November 23rd. The official party line is that there are a lot of family films coming out at that time, but I imagine the WETA crew is very happy to have a few extra months for post-production. The apes are apparently all-digital, so that’s got to take some work. It also frees the film from competing with Super 8 and Green Lantern, both of which are also heavy on the sci-fi.

On the comedy front The Big Year, a birdwatching comedy (no, seriously) starring Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson has been scheduled for October 14th, and The Sitter, which seems to be essentially Daddy Day Care with Jonah Hill, has been pushed back from July 15th to August 5th. Meanwhile, What’s Your Number, starring Anna Faris and Chris Evans, was pushed back from April 29th to September 30th.

Finally, the romantic comedy Monte Carlo has been shuffled from July 1st to August 12th, and the Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried sci-fi film Now moves from September 30th to October 28th. Justin Timberlake again? Wasn’t he a musician?

Normally rescheduling movies is a bad sign, but since this is almost Fox’s entire schedule I don’t think we should worry. If five months means Rise of the Apes gets better looking digital apes, I’ll be happy happy. Not that I’m into digital apes or anything. Whoa… writing this article is getting uncomfortable really fast.

Let us know if you have any thoughts on the rescheduling in the comments!