Gasps as Gatsby lives up to his reclusive image

One can read too much into news of shifting release dates, but the information that Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby has been kicked back by a full six months has really got movie soothsayers chattering.

The recent trailer for Baz’s adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous novel had already divided opinion. Enthusiasts for the Australian’s school of camp extravagance felt that it looked every bit as fabulous as they had hoped. Students of the elegant Fitzgerald novel struggled to speak over the gagging sound emerging from their throats. It’s in 3-D. It features music from Jack White and Kanye West. Gatsby: Queen of the Desert, anybody?

For all that moaning – and despite the failure of Luhrmann’s Australia – pundits still expected The Great Gatsby to figure during Oscar season. Preliminary predictions had the film squaring up against other Christmas releases such as Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. Then, last week, Warner Brothers dropped its bomb. The picture will not appear in commercial cinemas until the summer of 2013.

Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, international distribution president for Warners, commented: “The responses we’ve had to some of the early sneak peeks have been phenomenal, and we think The Great Gatsby will be the perfect summer movie around the world.”

To be fair, she may be entirely sincere. A noisy, camp, music-heavy romp might work very well in the summer months. But it does, at least, look as if the film has been ever-so-slightly rebranded.