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J.A. Bayona’s fantasy drama A Monster Calls from Focus Features will debut wide on October 21, a week later than scheduled.
A Monster Calls moves out of less busy weekend into a more hectic one. October 14 only has three wide entries now with Warner Bros’ The Accountant, Universal’s Kevin Hart: What Now? and Screen Gems’ Underworld: Blood Wars. The following weekend with A Monster Calls in the mix now has six — count ’em! — wide releases with 20th Century Fox’s spy comedy Keeping Up With the Joneses, Uni/Blumhouse’s Ouija 2, Paramount’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Pure Flix’s I’m Not Ashamed and Lionsgate’s Boo! A Madea Halloween. Wow.
Written by Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls follows a boy who seeks the help of a tree monster so that he can cope with his single mother’s terminal disease. The monster tells him stories to help cope with his life, though he has difficulty understanding the point of the bizarre tales. The boy doesn’t get along with his grandmother, which is unfortunate because he will have to live with her when his mother passes away. Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Toby Kebbell, Lewis MacDougall and Liam Neeson star. Bayona’s previous feature The Impossible played during awards season 2012 and focused on a family in peril during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Thailand.
Yesterday, Focus Features announced that Colin Trevorrow’s The Book of Henry would begin its rollout on September 16.