Jeymes Samuel

Source: London Film Festival, Getty Images

Jeymes Samuel

Jeymes Samuel’s The Book Of Clarence has been pushed back from September 22 to January 12 2024 as Sony Pictures announced several schedule changes on Wednesday (June 21).

The Legendary Pictures feature – Samuel’s follow-up to his 2021 western and BFI London Film Festival world premiere The Harder They Fall – stars LaKeith Stanfield in the title role, alongside Omar Sy, RJ Cyler, Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy and Anna Diop.

The story is inspired by the classic Hollywood epics set in biblical times and tells of a down-on-his-luck Jerusalem man who embarks on a misguided attempt to use the rise of the Messiah for his own gain and unexpectedly learns about faith and finds his own path.

The cast includes Teyana Taylor, David Oyelowo, Alfre Woodard and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Samuel – aka British Singer-songwriter The Bullitts – is producing alongside James Lassiter, Tendo Nagenda, and Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter. Garrett Grant serves as executive producer.

The move means Spider Man spin-off El Muerto, which had been scheduled to open on January 12 2024, has been temporarily removed from the calendar with the new date to be announced.

Puerto Rican rap giant Bad Bunny aka aka Benito Antonio is the first Latino to lead a live-action Marvel film and plays the son of a luchador who is next in line to inherit the ancestral power of El Muerto. Antonio appeared in the assassins on a train thriller Bullet Train opposite Brad Pitt.

The studio has moved up Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money from October 20 to September 22. The feature is based on the GameStop stock frenzy saga and stars Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, and Shailene Woodley.

Sony Pictures holds rights to the Black Bear Pictures film in the US, Latin America, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, South Africa, India and select Asian markets.

It was unclear at time of writing whether or not the schedule changes were due to the impact of the ongoing writers strike on production and post-production schedules.

As Screen previously reported, the longer the strike goes on – it is now in its eighth week – the greater the likelihood Hollywood studios and distributors shuffle their release schedules towards the end of this year and into 2024.

Disney recently announced a major schedule change which sees the fifth Avatar instalment pushed back from 2028 to 2031.