Mr. Showbiz
5 October 2000
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Bumping Moulin Rouge
Aussie Film To Be Released at Later Date

Wondering how the musical Moulin Rouge, from outrageous Aussie director Baz Luhrmann, would fare in this year’s Oscar race?

The film, which Luhrmann is boldly calling “a reinvention of the musical form,” has been bumped from a holiday 2000 release to summer 2001, Variety reports.

Citing the usual need to take extra pains in the post-production process — rather than, say, cold feet — 20th Century Fox is taking the film off its Christmas calendar.

In the follow-up film to Luhrmann’s baroque William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet Nicole Kidman stars as a 19th-century courtesan and Ewan McGregor as her besotted lover. The director has referred to his musical as a marriage of extremes: “Rocky Horror meets Titanic.”

While a singing-dancing spectacular sounds more like an Oscar contender — at least in the costume and set categories — than the kind of explosive action we crave in the summertime, we’re sure Fox execs know what they’re doing. Still, the last successful musical was, what, Grease, back in the ’70s?

Moulin Rouge is just one of five Kidman movies slated for a 2001 release. Miramax’s The Birthday Girl was bumped from a September 2000 to a February 2001 release and Columbia’s Panic Room is set for June. Dates for the Jane Campion-directed thriller In the Cut and the Spanish-set The Others are yet to be announced.

Fox still has Men of Honor and Cast Away in its Oscars 2000 hope chest