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Hoping to avoid competition with Warner Bros.’ family-adventure Pan and the animated comedy Pixels, Poltergeist has changed its release plans and will now be in theaters on May 22, 2015.
That puts it three weeks after Avengers: Age of Ultron, which is around the time the previous Avengers installment stopped dominating at the box office (although obviously it continued to perform well for quite a while after that).
The reimagining of horror classic had been expected to arrive in theaters this July from director Gil Kenan, Pulitzer-Prize winning screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire and producer Sam Raimi.
Poltergeist, which came out in 1982, told the story of a suburban family haunted by evil ghosts. According to Kenan, the story will be updated for a 21st audience, reflecting modern society’s fears and anxieties regarding the unknown.
Actors Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt will play the parents, while eight-year old actress Kennedi Clements will play Madison, the central character who is abducted by ghosts.
“The 10-year-old boy is really the protagonist this time,” Rockwell said in a recent interview. “JoBeth Williams was the protagonist for the most part in the first one and now the kid, it’s really through his point-of-view. So it’s more of a kids’ movie so I don’t know if it’s gonna be like rated-R scary.”
“It’s not like Conjuring type of scary,” he clarified. “You know, it’s a different kind of movie. It’s more of an adventure. It’s essentially a child abduction film when you come down to it. I mean, the original Poltergeist is too.”
