With three months remaining in this calendar year it’s never too early to start talking about projects arriving in 2012. Recently, Warner Bros. Pictures dated two of its 2012 releases, and pushed the release date up of a new film based on one of Nicolas Sparks’ novels.
Gangster Squad, the period LAPD/mob epic from Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer, will head to theaters on October 19, 2012. Sean Penn plays notorious gangster Mickey Cohen, while Ryan Gosling plays a cop assigned to a special division of the LAPD to take him down. The cast also includes Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, The Killing‘s Mireillie Enos, Anthony Mackie, Michael Pena, Robert Patrick, Giovanni Ribisi, and Nick Nolte.
The October release falls in line with Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (also a Warner Bros. film), which was released on October 6, 2006. Gangster Squad opens up against The Big Wedding starring Robert De Niro and Susan Sarandon and an untitled David Chase film.
Ben Affleck’s third feature, Argo, will open a month prior on September 14, 2012. This is also the same time frame Warner Bros. used when they released Affleck’s sophomore effort The Town in 2010. Argo revolves around a little-known incident of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis involving Ben Affleck’s character, Tony Mendez, a CIA exfiltration specialist, who devises a plan to get six Americans out of the country. The film also features Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, Kyle Chandler, Victor Garber, Monsters‘s Scoot McNairy and John Goodman among the supporting players.
Former Disney idol Zac Efron is following Miley Cyrus in headlining new Nicholas Sparks adaptation. The Lucky One, about a Marine who travels to North Carolina after serving in Iraq to search for the unknown woman he believes was his good luck charm during the war, is getting a bump up in its release. Originally slated for August 12th, it will now open on April 20, 2012.
