Last night The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Kilday and Matthew Belloni informed that Warner Bros. will probably postone the September 7th release of Ruben Fleischer‘s The Gangster Squad until January 11th, 2013 in order to allow for a reshooting of a scene involving a movie theater shoot-out.

The concern, obviously, is that this scene is too similar to last week’s Aurora massacre, and that it’s better to be safe than sorry by replacing it. The original scene will almost certainly appear on the Bluray down the road…right?

So that’s it — The Gangster Squad is being seen as a compromised, hard-luck film, and is now limping and stooped over and off to the showers. It’ll never again generate any real excitement, not after this. Expectations were a bit dicey to start with (i.e., the Fleischer factor), but now the wind is really out of the sails. If I was running the show I would get the re-shoots done lickety-split and get The Gangster Squad into theatres by late November or December. I’m sorry but a January opening just sends the wrong message.