“Jupiter Ascending” falls to February 2015 release date #JupiterAscending

“Jupiter Ascending,” one of the rare oddities for the 2014 summer blockbuster season – an original film that was neither a sequel or a comic book related adventure, starring Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis and Eddie Redmayne, has been delayed to February 2015.

Warner Bros. attributed the delay to the need to finish major special effects just seven weeks before the film’s release on July 18. At a screening I attended this week, “Jupiter Ascending” was the one trailer previewed so this timing is pretty awful.

The film is the mastermind of “The Matrix” siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski, whose last would-be epic “Cloud Atlas,” disappointed with only $130 million worldwide.

Dan Fellman, WB domestic distribution chief, told Variety that the Wachowskis had to finish work on over 2,000 special effects and the deadline for the international release proved too significant a challenge.

Ironically, the last highly touted summer blockbuster that got pushed to the first quarter of the following year was “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” which also featured Tatum.That film was supposedly delayed to allow for a 3D conversion, but in the end the bump didn’t end up helping distributor Paramount much at all.

That film was set to come out in June 2012, but got bumped to March 28, 2013. The sequel to the lowly regarded “G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra,” “Retaliation” brought in $14 million less than its predecessor its opening weekend and $32 million overall. “ROC” appeared to benefit from its August 2009 opening, but “Retaliation” wasn’t able to strike the same box office gold that “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” found in opening to $95 million on April 4.

Fellman said the new date is the same as the blockbuster WB hit, “The LEGO Movie,” but it seems a stretch to assume “Jupiter” will reach the same heights as the LEGO film, which opened to $69 million en route to a massive $255 million total gross.