This has been a very telling sign in the past, in the way that if there are no Press Screenings prior to a movie release it’s usually because it’s very bad and the studio don’t want the Press to know in order to give it some chance on opening night\weekend.
According to Karina (cool name) over at Cinematical she’s having real trouble getting any of her writers into one:
…early last week, a rep at Columbia called me back to tell me that she couldn’t get my writer into a screening of Rupert Wainwright’s remake of The Fog. When I pressed her on it, she admitted, “There, um, there arenx27t going to be any press screenings.” Ohhhhhh. “Really?” I asked. “None? At all?” “No,” she replied, somewhat sheepishly. “We’re, um, we’re not pre-screening it.”
Looks like they’ll have a review this weekend though, but no screenings is most definitely a bad thing…be afraid, be very afraid. Mind you, did we really believe that the feel of the original could have been recreated by anyone other than Carpenter, and could it really work with a young gang of actors? Sure, we’ve seen that model fail a few times before!
