Paramount Dumps New Schwartzman Film

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Today The Playlist blog updates on a Jason Schwartzman film we’ve been looking forward to, Todd Luiso’s The Marc Pease Experience.

[The Playlist] talked to Todd Louiso, director of the underrated Phillip Seymour Hoffman drama “Love Liza,” this morning, about his experience with his follow-up film, “The Marc Pease Experience.” The film is unfortunately the latest Paramount Vantage casualty.

Even though the movie stars comic heavyweights Jason Schwartzman and Ben Stiller, as well as talented up-and-coming actress Anna Kendrick, it’s being dumped in ten markets on August 21st. The movie won’t even be playing in New York or Los Angeles.

The film centers around an endearing premise (and here we’ll just quote from the official synopsis – it’s been a while since we read the script): “Schwartzman plays Marc Pease, a man 10 years out of high school and still living in the past when he was the star in his high school’s musicals. During the course of one day, as Pease’s former teacher/mentor Mr. Gribble (Stiller) oversees the opening night of another show, Pease finally exorcises his demons and realizes there’s more to life than Broadway artistry.” Sounds good, right?

Not good enough, apparently. You cannot find anything concrete about this movie online aside from a basic synopsis and cast. There’s not a trailer, there are no promotional photos; there are pages set up at New York Times online and Yahoo movies, but nothing is on those pages accept the bare bones.

Lousio told us the cities in which ‘Marc Pease’ is opening: San Francisco, Chicago, Philly, Miami, Dallas, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Sacramento, and Boston (“maybe,” he added).

Read the rest of the story at The Playlist.

The last film this high profile I recall a studio dumping like this was Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, with Luke Wilson and Bob Musgrave. I saw that in a suburb of Chicago (I have a feeling many of the regions listed will be actually be around that city, not in that city), and was given a market research form to fill out. There were about ten people in that theater and that film had a more notorious struggle before it’s release. If you’re one of the few people who are able to see the film, let us know what you think.

The film, in those selected markets, is scheduled to open on August 21st.

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3 Replies to “Paramount Dumps New Schwartzman Film”

  1. I saw two test screenings of this film at Paramount, a few months between each other. I enjoyed the film, but it wasn’t incredible. There were lots of issues, but many were resolved before the second time is saw it.

    It’s so funny that this was announced today because I was wondering this morning what happened to it!

  2. Honestly, Paramount has been making the worst moves in the business lastely. Ever seen Transformers 2? Horrible.

  3. I’ve been going into stores around town and when they ask if I need help finding anything I reply with “oh, I don’t know if anyone in town has this… but I need a GOOD script for Transformers 2, I’ve been trying to find it for my friend…do you know him? his name is Michael Bay”

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