According to the blog of Michael J. Bassett, the release date for UK for Solomon Kane movie, has been put earlier than planned. The first dates were hinting at March, due to a similar window of the possible US release, but now Paul Berrow and Mr. Bassett have announced, that the UK release will be happening at the 19th of February this year. Aside from that the Spanish and Russian cinema audience seems to be enjoying Solomon Kane a lot more than the French did. The publishers told Mr. Berrow (as he told the fans in the Conan.com boards) that the movie is making a good move in those territories.
And on that bombshell it’s time to show you more of the constantly pushed out specials and making of’s for the Solomon Kane Movie, that try to show you more of it’s production and blood and sweat and tears and the passion that went into making it.
Both producer Paul Berrow and director Michael J. Bassett have been very open and communicative with the followers of Robert E. Howard on the official REH Forums. This time a fellow Robert E. Howard fan got the chance to snatch away some time in the interview section of the spanish premiere, to ask Michael J. Bassett some of the questions that have been circling around in the REH community for a while.
Interview with Michael J. Bassett about Solomon Kane
France is being invaded by the puritan Solomon Kane and the ever working marketing machinery doesn’t stand still, not even over the holidays. Here we have two more interesting and great looking clips from the Solomon Kane Movie.
One shows a fight scene in a courtyard against some witch and her followers while the other is a making of, explaining the creature creation of Solomon Kane in more detail.
Every clip that is being released so far just heightens my anticipation, because every scene is dark and moody and matches Howard’s description of the world very well. Even though Michael J. Bassett took quite some liberties from REH to create his origin story, he certainly captured the world and the mood essence of REH’s yarns perfectly.
The cinema release in France is quickly closing in and Solomon Kane is pretty much up against the marketing power of Cameron’s AVATAR, but these last weeks and days are also filled with new and exciting sneak peaks into the movie, through several teaser being released. Here we have the first two, one showing a scene from the beginning of the movie, when Solomon Kane is still a mercenary for the Queen and raids a village in North-Africa and the second one is a scene where the family he travels with gets captured by badies.
So far the media attention for these two teasers has been astonishing. Not one major or minor movie dedicated page missed out on spreading the news. Everyone is excited to see the movie and of course we are still waiting for a US-release date to be announced. Stay tuned!
Yesterday evening Michael J. Bassett together with James Purefoy attended a preview screening of Solomon Kane for the french audience in Paris. We’ll see what the french audience has to say on Solomon Kane very soon. But for now here is another, very interesting in-depth interview with Michael J. Bassett on Solomon Kane, where he goes a bit more into detail about his decisions, his goals and his general intention of the film itself.
I can’t wait to hear the news of a German distributor, but since Splendid film recently picked up the rights to distribute the upcoming Conan movie, they maybe interested in more Howard material. All I can say to them (and I say it in German): “Lasst euch diese Chance nicht entgehen Splendid!”
After a long time of wait, some rumours and some times being written on IMDB and then taken down, the official Solomon Kane Facebook Page has released a couple of release dates for some of the areas where Solomon Kane will get a cinema release.
Here is the list of Solomon Kane release dates:
France – 23rd December 2009
Russia – 31st December 2009
Spain – 1st January 2010
Netherlands – 14th January 2010
UK – 5th February 2010
Now all the rest of us has to do is sit tight and hope other distributors come out in the open with their dates too or in the case of the US area, buy the movie and release it to a broad audience!
Lionsgate did pick up Solomon Kane for a US release, according to Fangoria. There is no release date, not even a vague one as the plans Lionsgate has with the movie are not yet totally clear. It remains to be seen, they continue, of Solomon Kane will get a cinema release, before going to DVD.
I really hope that Solomon Kane gets a wide US release, with all the advertising shabang the movie deserves. It would break my heart to see this pearl go direct-to-dvd just because the distributors are afraid of anything coming out of the independent market.
UPDATE
The director Michael J. Bassett has posted on his twitter, that the rumour about Lionsgate is not true. This is sad news, let’s hope someone picks up SK for real soon.
The second film festival of Solomon Kane is over and more people have gotten the chance to see the Solomon Kane Film and enjoy the puritan rising to greatness. The Austin Fantastic Filmfest was the second place where Michael J. Bassett and Paul Berrow have travelled to show their master piece to the eager and interested fantasy crowd. This crowd of genre fans of course has their own opinion on the dark fantasy horror spectacle Solomon Kane and here is a list, we will update as reviews come in, of reviews from the AFF screening.
It’s nice to see Solomon Kane reaching a broader and wider audience of genre fans, that hopefully will go out of the cinema and right on to their Facebook account to spread the word of the greatness that is Solomon Kane.
A longer report on the Solomon Kane Midnight Madness has been published on youtube. It starts with the “red-carpet” scene where Producer Paul Berrow and Samuel Hadida together with Michael J. Bassett answer some quick questions while walking into the cinema hall right before Midnight Madness begins.
The second video is a recording of the Q&A session right after the Solomon Kane Film has been shown to the audience. Again Michael J. Bassett and James Purefoy jump back on the stage to answer the questions to the eager and interested audience.
Every piece of information I can get my hands on, just makes me more excited about the film and I am really looking forward to seeing this on the big screen around the world and I hope it will be huge success, because Solomon Kane, as one of the most interesting characters Howard invented, deserves major screen presence in the future. There are stories to be told and lessons to be learned about this wise and massively interesting character – Solomon Kane.
Now Toronto Film Festival is over and the first public screening of Solomon Kane was supposedly a huge success, as Michael J. Bassett has written on his private blog yesterday. All over the Internet we can see reviews popping up (some of the press related reviews we’ve listed for your convenience) and especially the reviews of the Solomon Kane Film written by genre fans are hugely positive, as this example portraits.
TIFF also marks the beginning of new community related Solomon Kane projects. The official Solomon Kane Facebook page has come to live, as well as the connected Twitter and also on Myspace will you find a new home for fans of the Puritan Solomon Kane. All those are pretty fresh and I bet will receive more tweaking, content and of course followers as time goes by, so join the ride!
