Mike Fleming

eagle-of-the-ninth-channingFocus Features has set its release calendar for 2011. The big surprise? The Eagle of the Ninth has moved from its September 24 slot and instead will open February 25, 2011. Directed Kevin Macdonald, the drama stars Channing Tatum as a Roman soldier in 140 AD who travels with his servant (Jamie Bell) into the wilds of Caledonia to discover why his father, leader of the Ninth Legion, disappeared with his troops in the mountains of Scotland. While tongues will surely wag over the move, the reasoning seems sound to me. The premise is more of mainstream than Oscar, and the decision was made to avoid opening in a hotly contested period that includes Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and the Ryan Reynolds-starrer Buried. Focus is trying a move that Paramount executed with great success last fall when it moved Shutter Island from fall to February.

* Focus will begin a platform release of the Cary Fukunaga-directed Jane Eyre on March 11, 2011. The film stars Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell and Judi Dench in an adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte novel. The film just wrapped.

* Hanna, the Joe Wright-directed film, will open April 8. Saoirse Ronan plays a badass teen who takes out anyone in her path as she tries to free the ex-CIA operative father (Eric Bana) who taught her survival skills.

* One Day, the film that An Education director Lone Scherfig begins shooting in July with Anne Hathaway starring, will open in the third quarter of 2011. David Nicholls has adapted his novel, about a young woman and man who meet on the night of their graduation. The film tracks their lives over the ensuing 20 years