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Coen Brothers comedy ‘Hail, Caesar!’ to open in February 2016

Joel and Ethan Coen's "Hail, Caesar!" will open Feb. 5, 2016.
(AFP/Getty Images)
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Mark your Julian calendar: “Hail, Caesar!,” the upcoming comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen, has been scheduled for release Feb. 5, 2016, from Universal Pictures, the first time in a decade the Coens will bring out a movie in the first quarter.

Set during the waning years of Hollywood’s Golden Age, “Caesar” follows a single day in the life of a studio fixer who has his work cut out for him. The star-studded cast includes Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson and Jonah Hill. The Coens are directing from an original script that they’ve been tinkering with for several years.

The Coens in recent years have tended to launch films during the fourth-quarter award season: “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “True Grit” came out in December, and “No Country for Old Men” was released in November. One has to go back a decade, to “The Ladykillers,” to find a Coen Brothers movie released in the first quarter of the year (March 26, 2004). That film grossed $39 million and received mixed reviews.

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It’s not yet known whether “Caesar” is a wide or limited release. For the moment, though, the movie has the date to itself. The following weekend, Valentine’s Day, will see the release of the rom-com “How to Be Single” as well as X-Men spinoff “Deadpool.”

Some other high-end filmmakers working in a more commercial vein have launched movies in February, offering a sort of counter-programming to the mid-budget genre movies that tend to populate that section of the calendar. That strategy fared well for Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” and Clooney’s “The Monuments Men,” both of which performed well commercially.

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