New Line Cinema appears to have pulled back fairly radically on its Little Children bookings. The Oregonian‘s Shawn Levy is reporting that Todd Field‘s Cheever-esque drama is “getting a very scattershot release from its distributor and, frankly, may be in trouble. It was meant to open in Portland on 11.3, but that date has been pulled and no new date has yet been announced.”

We all know Children hasn’t done much business, or been given much of a chance to, I should say. Since opening on 10.6.06 it’s only been booked into 32 theatres, and has taken in a total of $801,000, according to www.boxofficemojo.com. I understand that a film of this stripe might not play in the boonies, but it’s been fairly well reviewed (it has an 88% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) and is widely respected, and you’d think, given this, New Line would at least give it a limited art-house opening for Chrissake in a major city like Portland, if for nothing else than to prime the market for the DVD release in early ’07.
I called four New Line people in a position to know something and they were all in meetings.