Neill Blomkamp's 'Elysium' Moved To Summer 2013, 'RoboCop' Pushed To 2014

Briefly: It always seemed weird that Neill Blomkamp's second film, Elysium, would be a March 2013 release. Granted, from what we've seen of the movie it looks like smarter, tougher sci-fi than most summer fare. But as the movie features Matt Damon escaping from the polluted surface of Earth to make use of medical technology on an elite space colony called, it also appears to have high entertainment value. I'd hope that a film like that could be marketed into summer success.

Evidently Sony feels the same, as the film is now scheduled for August 9, 2013. That's a good late-summer berth for a smart sci-fi film, and roughly the same spot in which Blomkamp's District 9 became a solid hit in 2009. So, all's good, right? Well, part of the move is based on the fact that the Aug 9 date became vacant when MGM, Sony and Columbia realized that the Jose Padilha reboot of RoboCop is going to need more time in the oven. So that has been pushed to February 7, 2014.

Sony made a couple other small date changes, too, as Cloudy 2: Revenge of the Lefotovers will now open onSeptember 27, 2013, and the feature version of Pixels has been pushed back from a May 23, 2014 date to an unspecified time slot. [Variety]