Oblivion Won’t Get An Early IMAX Release After All

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Oblivion

Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion opens wide on April 19th, but the film was supposed to get an early IMAX release on April 12th. I say was because Universal Pictures just announced that they’re putting the brakes on that plan. The Tom Cruise sci-fi tentpole will only have one debut, hitting theaters, IMAX and otherwise, on the 19th.

Oblivion is still slated to open in many international markets on April 12th, and the decision to delay basically comes down to a question of marketing. The move allows Cruise to keep shilling the movie overseas, and will allow him to return to the states and have a week to hype the domestic release. So you can bet we’ll be seeing Cruise all over TV talk shows, print media outlets, and the Internet in the week before the movie drops. Think we’ll hit the saturation point?

In Oblivion, 60 years have passed since an alien invasion almost wiped humanity from the face of the Earth. Even though we won the fight, the majority of the human race lives in exile in space. A few people, like Jack Harper (Cruise), a former Marine and drone repairman, remain on the surface of their home planet, serving as a mop-up crew. When a shadowy stranger (Olga Kurylenko) crash-lands on Earth, Jack is forced to reexamine everything he thinks he knows about his homeworld.

Oblivion also stars Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, Andrea Riseborough, and Zoe Bell.

Are you excited for Cruise’s return to big-time science fiction? Or are you of the camp that wants to see the polarizing star fall flat on his face?