October release-date news: The Book of Clarence gets a world premiere, Taylor Swift scares off Angels and demons

Clarence is billed as "the most punk, political, and hugely fun film you’ll see this year."

James McAvoy and LaKeith Stanfield in The Book of Clarence.

Looks like The Book of Clarence will technically be a 2023 film after all.

The movie, which stars LaKeith Stanfield as a first-century hustler who tries to get rich by pretending to be a messiah like Jesus, was originally going to come out a few weeks from now, but it got bumped to January 2024 a couple months ago.

Now comes word that the film will have its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in mid-October—and the festival’s website describes the film like so:

Unlike some members of the Jerusalem community in AD33, Clarence is not the most spiritual of citizens. Seemingly unmoved by Jesus Christ’s message of peace and brotherly love, Clarence sees a perfect window of opportunity to take advantage of a nascent celebrity culture. But at what cost to his eternal soul? Following his kinetic, hugely enjoyable all-Black frontier action drama The Harder They Fall, Jeymes Samuel returns with the most original take on the story of Christ since Monty Python’s Life of Brian. And playing Clarence, LaKeith Stanfield (Atlanta, Judas and the Black Messiah, Sorry to Bother You) delivers a star performance cementing his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most compelling performers. A work of huge ambition and style, The Book of Clarence wins hands down as the most punk, political, and hugely fun film you’ll see this year.

The festival’s website says the film has a runtime of 136 minutes—longer than The Passion of the Christ (127 minutes), but slightly shorter than Noah (138 minutes)—and it gives the film a “content warning” of “graphic violence, flashing images.”

So, while regular audiences will have to wait until after New Year’s to see the film, we should be seeing the first reviews of it in a month or so. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, in other release-date news…

At a time when studios have started delaying major films like Kraven the Hunter (was October 6, 2023; now August 30, 2024) and Dune: Part Two (was November 3, 2023; now March 15, 2024) because the stars won’t be able to promote their films during the actors’ strike, Taylor Swift has swept in and saved movie theatres by announcing the release of a concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, on October 13.

I don’t follow Swift’s music, and I ordinarily wouldn’t have said anything about this film, but it has already broken records for single-day ticket pre-sales, and the sudden arrival of this major, major moviegoing event has, amusingly, scared off a horror movie and a “faith-based” movie that were both set to come out that day.

The Exorcist: Believer, a sequel to 1973’s The Exorcist that brings back original star Ellen Burstyn for the first time, was promptly moved up one week to October 6.

As producer Jason Blum tweeted:

Meanwhile, the “faith-based” movie Ordinary Angels—produced by the people behind Jesus Revolution—has simply been taken off the calendar for now, with Deadline reporting that the studio might just wait out the actors’ strike because the movie’s star, two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank, “wants to promote the pic.”

Anecdotally, I know of at least one preview screening of this film that was cancelled at the last minute nearly two weeks ago, so a part of me wonders if a release-date change was in the works before Taylor Swift came along… but no, I don’t think so, because the studio actually released a new trailer for the film just last Tuesday:

At any rate, until now I hadn’t really thought about the fact that an Exorcist sequel and a “faith-based” movie were coming out on the same day, but as it is, I find it kind of amusing that Taylor Swift scared off “angels” and demons, so to speak.