Well, there goes another N.Y. Film Festival screening opportunity. Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master, a Weinstein Co, release, will now open on Friday, 9.14 rather than Friday, 10.12. So it’ll play the Venice Film Festival and then probably Toronto and maybe even Telluride, and open right after this flurry…and what I suspect will be a flurry of rave reviews.

And that’s not all — Andrew Dominik‘s Killing Me Softly, a moderately violent Weinstein release about an assassin (Brad Pitt) hunting down guys who’ve robbed a mob card game, is being bumped from 9.21 to 10.19.

You wanna hear my theory? These deck shufflings are all about Killing Me Softly and Harvey Weinstein‘s just-announced call for a summit discussion about screen violence. I’m thinking that if Harvey’s powwow happens sometime in mid or late August, let’s say, there would be a slight atmosphere of credibility erosion if the Weinstein Co. had a violent film coming out right around the corner. Nudging Killing Me Softly into late October will, I’m thinking, reduce that faint feeling of discomfort.

It’s just a theory, of course, but I’d like to hear from someone who believes these release-date changes would’ve been announced if Harvey hadn’t brought up the idea of a movie-violence summit. And explain the motivation without it.